As you are coming from photoshop I am guessing you are trying to make a pixel selection. As Xara products are vector illustration programs that have other capabilities the main tools are vector based. But a pixel selection can be made and it's very easy to remove items from their backgrounds of photos and raster(pixel based illustrations) In this video I demonstrated how to use the magic lasso tool to remove items from the background of a photo and then convert them to vector objects. It should help with the basics of the magic lasso tool. NOTE: the magic lasso only works on photos and raster images (Pixel based images) not vector objects