Selections and the Status Bar
Being able to understand the status bar is a critical part of working with most selections and I refer to it in many of my tutorials. I too often have taken for granted that people understand how to use it and all too often have been asked to explain what the heck I am talking about. So with that in mind here is a tut explaining how to use the status bar (which is the bar running across the very bottom of your workspace..lol) with selections.
Resources- PSP 7.
Let's get started
- Open a new image 250 x 250px. White background. Add a new raster layer. Do not move your cursor over the image yet. Get the rectangular selection tool.
Take a look at the status bar. On the left you should see "For Help, press F1' And on the far right you should see Image 250 x 250 x 16 million - 183.6 KBytes.
The right side of the status bar at this point tells you the size of the image (250 x 250), how many colors the image contains (16 million) and the size of the file. The size and colors will stay constant, but the file size will change to reflect changes you have made to the image. It should also be noted that if you open your image in inches instead of pixels the size of the image in the status bar is still represented in pixels as is the cursor position.
- Now slide your cursor over the image and watch the left side of the status bar. You should see something like this:
The numbers in the parenthesis represent where your cursor is in pixels at any given moment and are called the coordinates. The first number represents the number of pixels from the left edge of the image. The second number represents the number of pixels from the top edge of the image. So in the example above my cursor is over from the left 83 pixels and down from the top 108 pixels.
Even though you do not click on the image, once you have hovered your cursor over it the status bar will register the coordinates. If you move your cursor off of the image the last coordinates will still register until you move your cursor off of the workspace.
- Move your cursor over your image until your status bar looks like this:
- Now left click and drag out the selection until the status bar looks like this:
Release the mouse button and you now have a perfectly square selection 150px x 150 px. The numbers in the first set of parenthesis are the starting coordinates (50,50), the numbers in the second set of parenthesis are your ending coordinates (200,200) and the numbers in the third set of parenthesis is the size of the selection (150px x 150px)
The number in the bracket reflect the ratio between the longest side and the shortest side (width and height) of the selection. Since our selection is a perfect square (height and width are equal) our number shows 1.00.
- Ok select none. Now place your cursor at 50,50 and draw a rectangle ending at 200,100. Keep an eye on your status bar and notice the numbers in brackets.
If the number in brackets is a whole number, in this case 3, the longest side is the width. Conversely, if the height is greater than the width the number is brackets will be a decimal number. When drawing with the circle, square and rounded square this number will always be 1, since in all case width and height are equal. You will rarely use the number is brackets, in fact, the only example I can think of would be illustrating a word problem from a math book. I am sure there must be more advanced uses for it since the developers put it there but since I am no brainiac I don't know what they would be 
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And that is all there is to it!. I hope you learned something useful and enjoyed this tutorial. If you have any comments or questions please feel free to .
