Selection

[nelsaadi]

I am new to this software. I don't know what happen to my selection tool, sometime I drag the resctangle and nothing show up. I have to reset preferernces to get it back to work. Also when it works and I selct something and push delete, I end up with white background rather than transparent. How can I change that to go to transparent.

[LeviFiction]

Well I can't answer why it doesn't show up.

However, I can answer why you get the white background. In PSP there are two kinds of layers Background Raster and just regular Raster.

Background Raster does not support transparency. Raster layers do. So when you hit "Delete" on your keyboard since the background layer does not support transparency it instead fills in that area with the current background color from your materials palette. Actually quite handy if you're looking for a quick way to fill in a selection with a solid color.

So you have to promote the background layer to a regular raster. You can do this either from the layers palette or the layers menu. Right-click on the background layer in the Layers Palette to get the context menu and select "Promote background layer." Or make sure the background layer is selected and go to the Layers menu and select "Promote Background Layer."

As a side note, PSP is setup to automatically convert the background layer into a full layer if you use the eraser tool or similar method. So if you clicked in the selection just once with the eraser tool it'll auto promote the background layer for you.

Once the background layer is promoted to a raster layer hitting "Delete" will erase the selection leaving it transparent.

[teknisyan]

For the missing selection tool, you can reset your workspace. You can do that by pressing and holding down the SHIFT key then double-click on the PSP icon then when you received the message "DO YOU WAN TO RESTORE PAINTSHOP Pro TO ITS DEFAULT STATE?" just click OK.

[nelsaadi]

Thanks to both Levifiction and Abiel. Everything worked just like you stated.