Selection tool

Different tools:

De-select: gets rid of any selected areas by pressing apple key then D.
Marquee tool:you can drag basic rectangular and circle shapes.
Lasso: click and hold to outline a selection this then joins two ends when you let go.
Magnetic lasso: works the same as the polygonal lasso, it will find any edges on your image that you move your mouse over.
Polygon lasso: click multiple points to outline a selection with straight edges. You join the two ends by double clicking.
To add and subtract from selections you have to hold down the shift key to add to an area and hold down the apple key to subtract from an area.
magic wand: to use the magic wand tool you have to click to select an area that is all the same colour, you adjust the tolerance which controls wether it just selects one colour or a range of colours. if you have the contiguous box ticked it will only select that one area, if it is untucked it will select areas of that colour or multiple colours throughout the whole image.

Anti alias/feather
The anti alias box allows you to create a smoothed edge on your selection this avoids a jagged pixilated edge. The feather tool
The feather tool is the amount of blur you add to the edge of a selection, this makes the shape or selection fade out into the background.

Curves: using curves you can adjust the brightness and contrast of the image.
Colour balance: this allows you to control the colours in your image, when you have an area selected you can click colour balance and change the colour of the area selected.
you can also use the invert tool over the top of a colour to make it the opposite colour to the colour it is placed on which created a nice contrast.

these are my final images after playing with all the different tools: