The selection brush tool, is a tool that makes selections. Unlike the other selection tools, you just brush this on like a paintbrush, it’s very easy to use. If you have used the selection brush and know Photoshop fairly well, you will notice it’s similar to Quick Mask. If you have never used the selection brush, it’s ok, we will go through ti here along with all its features. Paint. When the selection is active, it’s the same as any selection. Hold Shift to add to the selection. Shortcuts or hotkeys help. Being able to create a soft edges selection is unique to this tool. You can paint freehand to make a selection. Let’s make a little art using the density art trick. Choose a different overlay color. A difficult task for many people is cutting out trees. Without going through all the steps. Choose the selection Brush. Ok, here’s a better way. Paint with black and white to clean up the mask. Much easier now. Press the Q key to go back to a selection. Quick Mask is more powerful, and is my choice. If you are newer, you may find the Selection Brush easier. So you have options. Just to finish our task. This is the same image, but using Select Sky. How to make selections in Photoshop tutorial, Power user tips for the selection tools in Photoshop. How to use the Adjustment Brush in Photoshop. Selection tools are critical in Photoshop. When you select a region, edits you make only affect the region and don’t touch the rest of your work. This is why selections are important and why Adobe has dedicated nine different tools to create general to extremely detailed selections. All of these tools can select, deselect, perform intersections, and more after you’ve made your initial selection to help you specify the details of your perfect region. The tools in question are at the top section of your toolbar. The rectangular marquee tool is the standard selection tool found in most programs. Select large, boxier chunks of your work. The elliptical marquee tool is very similar to the rectangular marquee tool and does the same job except with an elliptical shape. The lasso tool and its family of tools require you to trace out your selection with your mouse. It’s a quick tool, so you can select organic, rounder shapes that you wouldn’t be able to capture with the rectangular and elliptical marquee tools. The polygonal selection tool is a more detailed version of the lasso tool that allows you to click the edges of your selection as though you were creating vertices of a polygon. Rather than depending on a shaky hand to trace the object in one stroke, it allows you to create a more steady outline of your object. You can manually click vertices like you would with the polygonal selection tool (and can press DELETE if you accidentally create a vertex you weren’t happy with) to lead the tool, but it does most of the work in higher contrast pieces where edges are clear enough for the program to recognize. Quick & Smart - You will probably use this tool the most. Magic Wand does exactly what it sounds like. It’s called a magic wand because it automatically selects pixels of similar colors and can therefore tell where objects start and end. Draw your attention the the owl we’re using the magic wand on. Want to give an object or logo a transparent background? Magic wand the white space and click DELETE. The quick selection tool uses a brush to paint out selected regions. The regions you select are almost Magic-Wand-tooled, because Quick Selection Tool also senses edges and creates more knowledgeable selections. Add to your selection. Don’t stress about making a perfectly precise selection the first time around. Instead, create a general selection and SHIFT adding the smaller chunks you missed. Subtract from your selection. Oftentimes, selection tools like Quick Selection and Magic Wand can get tricked by artifacts in the photo, and accidentally select a chunk it wasn’t supposed to. Take the intersection from your selection. These three tools add lots of extra functionality to each selection tool. Feathering softens the edge of your selection to create more natural transitions from whatever modifications you make to your selection and the rest of the photo. Anti-aliasing is a small yet important feature that modifies the edge pixels of the image while you’re selecting to make it more clear to Photoshop where edges start and end. It does not modify the details of your image but does make for cleaner selections. Anti-aliasing is a setting found on the Magic Wand, Elliptical Marquee tool, and all tools in the Lasso family. Use OPTION/ALT to create a rectangular/elliptical selection from a central point. SHIFT + F7 to invert your selection. This is helpful when the object you want to select takes up most of the picture but is difficult to select. Note that SHIFT + (selection tool’s shortcut) will cycle through to the next tool in that group. Mastering all the different selection tools of Photoshop means better masks, fills, crops, adjustments, and more control over an extremely complex and powerful program. Since its release in 1987, Adobe Photoshop has become the world’s leading image editing software. One reason for Photoshop’s enduring popularity among photographers, designers, and artists is its ability to make precise selections of any area in any image - a must for photo editing, photo collaging, illustration, and more. Whether you’re a Photoshop wizard with years of experience under your belt or a complete newbie just testing out the waters, you’ll turn to the quick selection tool, again and again, to make accurate selections in an instant. With so many selection tools in Photoshop, what makes the quick selection tool stand out as one of the most precise and yet easy-to-use tools of its kind? What’s more, Photoshop’s quick selection tool can select not only color but also textures and patterns. Note: The quick selection tool was first introduced in Photoshop CS3. It’s not available in earlier versions of Photoshop, so this tutorial will assume you have CS3 or higher. Unlike other Photoshop selection tools, the quick selection tool selects not only colors but also textures. As you use the tool, Photoshop is continuously analyzing the image so that it automatically selects pixels that are similar in texture, color, and patterns. For the purposes of this tutorial, we’ll practice with this image of a flower. You can download a copy from Unsplash here. Locate the quick selection tool from the toolbox menu that’s docked on the left side of your screen. Photoshop treats the quick selection tool like a brush, so you can find it grouped with the magic wand tool under the brush icon. Like any standard brush, the quick selection tool can have its own brush presets. Since you’ve opened the tool for the first time, this menu should be empty right now. The brush mode section offers three options for managing the selections you make. New selection: As its name indicates, this option creates a new selection.Add to selection: This option adds more pixels to the current selection, which works the same as holding down the Shift key. But unlike other selection tools, you don’t need to manually select add to selection. Because Photoshop treats the quick selection tool like a brush, all the standard brush options are available to you, such as changing brush hardness, size, spacing, angle, or roundness. This option tells Photoshop whether to create a selection from all existing layers, or just the currently selected one. The auto-enhance option creates selections with smoother edges. It’s important to keep in mind that, as its name indicates, the quick selection tool is designed for making swift selections of similar pixels. Once you’ve made your first selection, the refine edge option becomes available. This option allows you to make your selection more accurate and detailed by softening and smoothing the edges. Select the quick selection tool and make sure that the brush mode is set to new selection. Now, click on the top left corner of the practice image. To continue removing the background, click on pixels adjacent to the selection. Photoshop will continue to “magically” select pixels around the flower as long as you continue to click. If you make a mistake, undo the action by pressing CTRL + Z, or hold the ALT key to deselect unwanted parts of the selection. If you find that you’re over-selecting pixels, your brush might be too large. Now go to the top search bar and type in “refine edge.” Press enter. This brings up the refine edge menu in a separate panel. This is where we can fine-tune the selection in a multitude of ways. Refine edge is a powerful tool in its own right, with multiple options for creating incredibly accurate selections. Refine Mode can display your selection on various backgrounds to reveal problem spots in your selection. The edge detection tool includes a special brush for refining a selection’s radius, found just to the left of the Edge Detection options. When you select the refine radius brush, you’ll find options at the top of the toolbar for adjusting the radius of your selection. Use this brush to paint on your selection. This section of the refine edge tool includes several options for detailing selection edges, with both a slider and counter for precision adjustments. The output section includes a checkbox to decontaminate colors, which eliminates any color remnants that other tools haven’t already cleaned up. Notice that the smart radius box under edge detection is checked, and the radius is set to 3 px. Under adjust edge, there’s a shift edge at -21%. With our selection now completed and saved, hit delete to delete the original background. That brings up a prompt for fill options, which asks you to choose a fill color for the new background. Congratulations! As you can see, the quick selection tool is not only incredibly powerful but also easy to use. The interesting thing about the quick selection tool is that it samples colors and textures in the same way as in the first selection. In our flower example, we started our selection from the background. Here’s another example of the quick selection tool in action. With the background selected, we can make it black and white by going to image > adjustments > black and white. You can experiment with the options under hue/saturation to find colors you like. Use the brush options to make your selections more accurate. Just as with any other Photoshop brush, you can change the brush size (press [to decrease the size, or ] to increase it), hardness, or roundness to get the best configuration for making a precise selection.Zoom in when working on edges that are hard to select. That allows you to see edges more clearly and adjust your tools accordingly.Master the refine edge tool and its many options for smoothing and softening selections. Refine edge comes in very handy when you want to get a smooth selection. The quick selection tool is one of Photoshop’s most useful features, and it opens up a world of creative possibilities for image-makers of all kinds. But while some of these tools are very popular - the Magic Wand, for instance! - others are less well-known. That’s where this article comes in handy. A selection tool allows you to isolate a part of an image while leaving the rest of the file untouched. Some Photoshop selection tools, such as the Object Selection tool, use artificial intelligence to make complex selections with a single click. Before I dive into the workings of specific selection tools, I’d like to offer an overview of every selection tool offered by Photoshop. If you’re serious about making Photoshop selections, consider testing out each tool to see how it works! Selection tools are handy when doing more standard edits, too. Thanks to selection tools, you can apply edits to targeted portions of an image. No Photoshop selection tool is best. Instead, some selection tools are more useful than others in specific situations. (It’s also a matter of personal preference and skill level. Note that, in most cases, you’ll need more than one selection tool to get the job done - so it pays to know a few different tools and how they work. 1. I used the Magnetic Lasso to follow the edge of the lemon slice. The Lasso tool is very versatile and can handle nearly any situation. The standard Lasso tool allows you to do free-hand selections. This tool allows you to make selections using straight lines. This tool “attaches” itself to the border of objects. It works best when you’re selecting a subject that contrasts clearly with the background. 2. The Object Selection tool uses AI to select objects - even if they’re out of focus. The Object Selection tool is a powerful option that’s powered by AI. It allows you to select any object (or objects) in your picture. If the Object Finder is enabled, you can hover over your picture and you’ll see an overlay of the object that will be selected. Alternatively, you can disable the Object Finder and choose either the Lasso or Rectangle mode. You can then draw an area where you want Photoshop to make the selection, which is useful if you want to select many objects with one click. You can also select objects from multiple layers by enabling the Sample All Layers option. 3. You can find the Select Sky tool under the Select menu. Note that this is a different tool than Sky Replacement, which is found under the Edit menu. Select Sky is useful when you don’t want to replace the sky but instead simply want to make specific edits to the sky while leaving the rest of the image untouched. While all Photoshop selection tools work differently, they can be modified, saved, and loaded in the same way. To start off, you’ll need to select an area of your image. You can use the selection tool of your choice; for my example, I’m using the Object Selection tool. It’s very difficult to get a perfect selection on the first attempt (or by using a single selection tool). This is why all selection tools can be set to add to or subtract from the selection. In my example (displayed above), the Object Selection tool didn’t do a great job selecting around the petals. Therefore, I needed to remove certain unwanted parts from the selection. That said, the modification that you need will depend on the image and what you’re trying to do. This step is optional and it depends on whether or not you’ll need to select the same object or the same part of the picture again. If the selection was difficult and you spent a lot of time refining it, it’s often a good idea to save it (just in case!). Simply choose Select>Save Selection, then type a name for the selection in the dialog box. If you save a selection, it will always be available for you to load. As you can see, Photoshop selection tools are incredibly diverse. And they offer so many features that it’s impossible to cover them in a single article. Hopefully, this gave you a good overview - enough to start experimenting! Which selection tools do you like best?
Mastering the Quick Selection Tool and related features leads to better masks, easier edits, and more precise crops. The Quick Selection Tool stands out for its balance of speed and accuracy, sampling both color and texture to determine edges. The Quick Selection Tool was first introduced in Photoshop CS3, and it remains a cornerstone for many workflows. Use the refine edge option after making an initial selection to achieve smoother, more natural borders. Zooming in on challenging edges helps you refine the brush size and edge accuracy. The ability to add to or subtract from a selection, plus the option to intersect with another selection, gives you flexible control over complex subjects. The Magic Wand, Elliptical Marquee, and Lasso family each offer distinct advantages depending on the image content and the level of detail required. The Object Selection Tool, powered by AI, further simplifies selecting objects or regions with a rough outline, especially when combined with the Sample All Layers option. Refine Edge and Decontaminate Colors work together to produce clean edges free of color fringing. In practice, you can start with a broad Quick Selection and then refine with the Edge Detection tools to capture fine details like hair or wisps of fur. After completing a selection, you can delete the original background or apply a fill to create a new backdrop. In this way, the Quick Selection Tool, along with its companion tools, offers a fast path from rough mask to polished composite.
Key features and practical tips
- Brush-like workflow: The Quick Selection Tool behaves like a brush, allowing quick, freehand selections with brush presets for size, hardness, and spacing.
- Edge-aware selections: Photoshop continuously analyzes texture and color to automatically snap to edges, improving accuracy as you paint.
- New, Add, and Subtract modes: Easily create a fresh selection, add more pixels, or subtract unwanted areas, with Shift for addition behavior.
- Refine Edge/Select and Mask: Refine Edge provides advanced controls for radius, smoothness, feathering, and decontamination to achieve clean borders.
- Smart radius and anti-aliasing: Smart Radius helps adjust edge detection for different parts of the image; anti-aliasing smooths edge transitions.
- Shortcut familiarity: Shortcuts like Ctrl/Cmd + Z and Alt/Option for deselecting parts speed up workflow; Invert with Shift+Ctrl/Cmd+I can be useful.
- Versatility across tools: Other tools like the Polygonal Lasso, Magnetic Lasso, Object Selection, and Select Sky complement Quick Selection for challenging scenes.
- Practical use cases: Cutting out subjects, replacing skies, applying localized edits, or preparing objects for compositing.
- Locate the quick selection tool from the toolbox and confirm brush mode is set to New Selection when starting a task.
- Click around the subject to expand the selection; press Ctrl/Cmd+Z to undo if you overstep.
- Invoke Refine Edge to fine-tune edge quality and remove artifacts; adjust radius, smoothness, and decontaminate colors as needed.
- Delete the background or fill with a chosen color, gradient, or pattern to complete the composite.
- Save a difficult selection for reuse by choosing Select>Save Selection.
Additional notes on related tools
The Polygonal Lasso Tool creates straight-edged selections, useful for geometric shapes. The Lasso family is ideal for tracing organic outlines with a freehand approach. The Object Selection Tool uses AI to identify objects or regions, and can be guided with the Object Finder overlay. The Select Sky tool focuses edits on the sky while leaving other areas untouched. All selection tools can be modified, saved, and loaded in the same way, and often benefit from combining multiple tools to achieve the best result.
Practical workflow example
- Start with a broad Quick Selection on the background and foreground elements.
- Switch to Add to Selection to capture missed areas, and subtract for unwanted regions.
- Use Refine Edge to smooth and refine the edges around complex subjects like hair, trees, or fur.
- Decide whether to delete the background or replace it with a new fill or image.
- Optionally apply adjustments (e.g., Black & White) to the background or selected areas to enhance contrast.