Basic help.

Recently converted from Photoshop because lol poverty, and decided to dive in and see if I could do the basic things here that I used to do in that program. I almost instantly hit a brick wall, though I'm going to assume it's just my unfamiliarity with the program. Also, I'm "self-taught" so I'm just an idiot pressing buttons and don't know the proper terms for anything.

What I want to do seems super simple: Make a selection. That's it. In Photoshop I would go to the Pen tool, make my little outline using curves and such, and then right-click to "make selection" or "convert to selection." Anything I had outlined on that layer would then become selected, and I could invert my selection and erase backgrounds. I can see how to create masks and erase backgrounds, but it's all freehand brushes. I'm using a cartoon-style image, so I have solid lines I could easily follow with a pen tool to remove the background that I don't want, and it would be a much cleaner process than doing it all by hand.

I tried looking up selections in the manual, but I think it must be called something different, because it basically just explained moving and rotating the image. I also tried the "Shape Tool" which looks like the correct tool, but all I could get it to do was draw lines, and after I had drawn too many it would break into a few dozen little red points and I couldn't see the line I was even drawing anymore. Even if I made a basic shape, it still just created that shape with no way to actually select what was within the boundaries of the shape.

Needless to say, I'm lost and I haven't even left the starting gate. :(

raina, welcome to TalkGraphics.

Down the left edge is a Toolbar.
The main Tools that actually create an object include: Freehand and Brush, Straight Line, Shape and Shape Painter tools; Rectangle, Ellipse and QuickShape tools; Text tool.
Images are dropped onto the page or picked from the gallery.

Any objects are then selectable by the use of the Selector tool with a click on the object or or a drag across several. The use of meta-keys is indicated in the status line.

What you are then left with are object manipulator tools that work on the selection.

When I started I wasn't even facing the right way.

Acorn

Welcome Raina,

Here's 3 methods, there are more ;)

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

Welcome to TalkGraphics Raina

Xara is basically a vector drawing program. Photoshop is a bitmap editing and creation program. Xara can so most of what Photoshop can and then some but it does it in a different manner as Acorn, Egg, and Frances have pointed out.