Floating Marquee Effects

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What is a Floating Marquee?

A marqueed selection that appears to "float" over the rest of the screen is called a Floating Marquee. You can tell when a selection is floating as its line of "marching ants" will be thicker than the usual marquee and there will be a drop shadow behind it.

A floating marquee will appear automatically when you use the Zoom, Crop, Paste, Open, and Insert screen commands. You can manually float a marqueed selection by selecting the Float command from the toolbar or rightclick menu.

There must be a marqueed selection on screen for the Float command to appear on the rightclick menu. The mouse shortcut to float a selection is to tripleclick it.

Unlike a regular marquee, a floating marquee can be moved around the screen without changing the underlying areas and can have any of several effects applied to it via the toolbar or the rightclick menu. There must be a floating marqueed selection on screen for the Effects commands to be enabled on the toolbar and to appear on the rightclick menu.

Rightclicking most effect buttons on the toolbar will undo the last effect that was applied. Be careful not to use the Undo Last command or toolbar button if you want to undo an effect as that command will cancel the entire floating marquee instead.

MyScreen's Floating Marquee Effects, their shorcut keys, and explanations of their use follow:

Float (shortcut key: alt+F)

This command creates a floating marquee out of a regular marqueed selection. It is the same as doubleclicking a regular marqued selection.

Sharpen (shortcut key: alt+S)

This command increases the contrast between adjacent pixels where there are significant color contrasts, usually at the edges of objects. They lighten the light pixels and darken the dark pixels. The result is that the selection appears to become less blurry.

Soften (shortcut key: alt+shift+S)

This command decreases the contrast between adjacent pixels where there are significant color contrasts, usually at the edges of objects. The result is that the selection appears to become more blurry.

Lighten (shortcut key: alt+L)

This command increases the lightness of a selection. It is especially useful for brightening up digital photos.

Darken (shortcut key: alt+D)

This command decreases the lightness of a selection.

Grayscale (shortcut key: alt+G)

This command converts a selection to shades of gray.

Rotate (shortcut key: alt+R)

This command turns a selection to the left in 90 degree increments.

Rightclick to rotate to the right.

Flip Horizontal (shortcut key: alt+H)

This command creates a right-to-left mirror image out of the original selection.

Flip Vertical (shortcut key: alt+V)

This command creates a bottom-to-top mirror image out of the original selection.

Buttonize (shortcut key: alt+B)

This command adds beveled edges to the original selection. To get visible beveled edges on a white background, you may need to rotate the image 180 degrees, apply the Buttonize effect, then rotate 180 degrees again (back to original orientation) and apply the Buttonize effect again.

Emboss (shortcut key: alt+E)

This command lets you add an embossed effect in any of four directions.

Feather1 (shortcut key: alt+1)

This command creates a rectangular fade-out within the edges of the original selection. Feather1 uses whatever is behind the floating marquee to create its fade-out, so you should crop or otherwise move the floating marquee so that it is postioned over what you want it to fade into.

Feather2 (shortcut key: alt+2)

This command creates a rounded-rectangle fade-out within the edges of the original selection. Feather2 uses whatever is behind the floating marquee to create its fade-out, so you should crop or otherwise move the floating marquee so that it is postioned over what you want it to fade into.

Feather3 (shortcut key: alt+3)

This command creates an oval fade-out within the edges of the original selection. Feather3 uses whatever is behind the floating marquee to create its fade-out, so you should crop or otherwise move the floating marquee so that it is postioned over what you want it to fade into.

Semi-Opaque (shortcut key: alt+O)

This command merges the floating marqueed image with whatever is behind it on screen. Semi-Opaque uses whatever is behind the floating marquee to create its effect, so you should crop or otherwise move the floating marquee so that it is postioned over what you want it to merge with.