Technical data

Manipulating Images 35
To duplicate the contents of the selection on the active layer, press the
Alt key and click, then drag with the Move tool.
As a shortcut if you’re working with any one of the selection tools, you
can press the Ctrl key to switch temporarily to the Move tool. Press
Ctrl+Alt to duplicate. Release the key(s) to revert to the selection tool.
Cut, Copy, Paste, Delete
These operations work pretty much as you’d expect. You can use the
buttons on the Standard toolbar, choose commands from the Edit menu,
or use conventional keyboard shortcuts.
As with the Move tool, “holes” appear as either the current background
color or transparent, depending which layer you’re working on. Also
keep in mind the handy Alt+Move tool operation (above) for quickly
duplicating selected pixels.
When pasting from the Clipboard, PhotoPlus offers several options.
The standard paste (Ctrl+V) operation creates a new, untitled image
window. You can use other Edit menu choices to paste the Clipboard
contents as a new layer, or centered into the current selection (if there is
one).
Cropping
Cropping is the electronic equivalent of taking a pair of scissors to a
photograph, except of course with a pair of scissors there is no second
chance! Cropping deletes all of the pixels outside the crop selection
area, and then resizes the image canvas so that only the area inside the
crop selection remains.
If you tried the captioning project earlier in the chapter, you’ve
already used the Crop tool to reduce an image to a regular, rectangular
area. Just select the Crop tool from the Tools toolbar and drag out a
rectangular crop selection area on the image. (Hold down the Ctrl key
while dragging to constrain the selection to a square.) Adjust the
selection rectangle as needed, then double-click to complete cropping.