If I click on the Lasso (free hand selection) tool and select some points, then the tool reverts to the Selection (Marquee – rectangular selection) tool. This does not happen with the other tools such as Measure, Slice, or Hand tools.
Is this intentional? I find it a nuisance to have to continually re-click on the Lasso tool.
Yes, I believe it is intentional. I think the idea is that you keep the mouse down until you have selected all of the points that you want to.
If you miss a couple, you can hold down shift, and add to the selection, or unselect a couple by dragging around them again with the rectangular selector tool.
Zoom to selected may help if the points are close together.
I can’t get this to work. Let’s say I am working with the plus sign – very simple: 12 points, 8 at the ends of the 4 “arms”, and 4 in the center where the arms cross; I want to delete the 8 outmost points, leaving just a rectangle in the center. (Not something a person would be likely to do, but it illustrates the problem.)
I started with the lasso at the top, encircled those 8 points by dragging 4 loops around them, (continuing from one loop to the next). I end up with the top 2 points plus the 4 center points selected. Those are not the points I “dragged around”. It would be very simple to lasso 4 groups if the lasso remained selected.
Yes, I KNOW you can select these points with the marquee tool, but that isn’t my point! I think it should be equally easy to do it with the lasso.
In the programs I am familiar with (mostly Adobe Photoshop and Indesign), a tool remains selected until the user selects a different one.
Hi Myrna,
Thanks for your suggestion. I prefer to use commonly used behavior, so I’ll definitely look into this, maybe I change it, or I’ll add a couple of shortcuts.
Easy enough:
Lassoo.png
Or, in that case, select the four central points and invert the selection (Control T).
Erwin: a technique used in Page Plus is to hold down shift while clicking a tool to make it persistent. To draw one frame, click the text frame tool, but to draw many frames, hold down shift while clicking the frame tool.
You didn’t do what I said. This was a very simple example, where you can find a different single path that will encircle only the desired points. I tried to describe lassoing 4 different groups of points, by dragging out 4 circles around them.
But what if you wanted to select, say, 2 points on the outer contour of an O, and 2 points on the opposite side of the inner contour? With the marquee, you can drag, release mouse, move to other side, SHIFT+drag. Can you show me how to do that with the lasso without releasing the mouse button before the 2nd drag and without selecting any unwanted points?
I think that any collection of points that you can select with the marquee, you should be able to select with the lasso, using exactly the same keystrokes and mouse up/down sequence, without having to reselect the tool in between. I don’t know of any other drawing (or “pseudo-drawing”) program that changes tools without user input.
Is this what you mean?
O2.png
Yes, that’s what I meant. Thank you.
Now another question 
. How does one post a screen shot as part of one’s message here on the forum?
See the Posting Links and Images thread in the Site Issues forum. PNG or GIF images with transparency are usuallly the best. Crop screenshots rather than resizing them for the best results. Don’t try to post anything wider than about 600 pixels. Try FastStone Capture for capturing just the screenshot you need.