In our last Photoshop tutorial we showed you some techniques to remove elements from your photos. But what if you want to select certain elements in order to manipulate them (e.g. adjust colours, sharpen or blur them) rather than removing them? In this tutorial we’ll show you nine useful tools for doing just that.
As YAdav Anil will tell you, Photoshop gives you the ability to select areas of your image based on two criteria: the colour and the shape. The first one is the easiest to work with, so let’s start with that.
-: SHAPE BASED SELECTIONS :-
1) Rectangular Marquee Tool
If you need to make an adjustment to an area which has a basic geometric
shape, the rectangular marquee tool (M) is the best tool for the job.
Simply click on one corner and drag to the opposite one. Boom!
2) Elliptical Marquee Tool
The Elliptical Marquee Tool is just like the Rectangular Marquee Tool,
but surprisingly it works with ellipses and circles rather than
rectangles. (Pro Tip: Press SHIFT+M to toggle between the various
marquee tools). It can be tricky to position your ellipse accurately as
you’re not starting at a precise point – to counter this just hold down
SPACE and you can move it around. If you need to select a perfect circle
just hold down SHIFT whilst you drag. Simples!
3) The Lasso Tool
So far so easy. It’s time to get to the next level. When you have
non-geomtric shapes to select the marquee tools won’t work – you’ll need
the lasso tool (L). It works the same way as a pencil, just draw around
the areas you need to select. By holding down ALT you can subtract
areas from the current selection
4) The Polygonal Lasso Tool
If you have a very complex geometric shape made only of straight lines,
then the polygonal lasso tool can be a lifesaver. It’s pretty
straightforward to use: click on the picture to create anchor points and
create a straight line based selection. If you hold down SHIFT you can
add a selection to the existing selection.
5) The Magnetic Lasso Tool
The big brother of the lasso tool is the magnetic lasso tool (use
SHIFT+L to toggle between the lasso tools). It follow the movement of
your mouse, creating a selection around a clearly defined object. You
can adjust the amount of points it puts down using the Frequency setting
– the higher the number the more anchor points it will lay down,
increasing the accuracy of the selection.
6) Quick Mask mode
Do you draw like Leonardo da Vinci? if so you should consider using the
Quick Mask mode – just hit Q to activate it. Once in Quick Mask Mose you
can draw using the brush with either a white or black fill on the
canvas. When you are done, hit Q again and see all your black painted
areas (which by default are highlighted with in red) transform into
selections.
-: COLOR BASED SELECTIONS :-
7) The Magic Wand Tool
Arguably the king of the colour based selections is the Magic Wand tool
(W). Set its tolerance in the option bar (the default is 32, which will
works well much of the time) and then click on the colour you want to
select.
As you can see, the selection is better articulated and quicker to
create than if you had done this manually with a shape based tool. If
you uncheck the ‘contiguous’ option the selection will be extended to
all areas of the image matching the selected colour, not just the
neighbouring areas.
8) Color Range
For a more controlled colour based selection it’s worth trying the Color
Range function, found in the Select menu. It works in a similar way to
the magic wand tool but you can manipulate the finished output in real
time.
9) The Quick Selection Tool
A hybrid between shape and colour based selection tools is the Quick
Selection tool (W), which works like a brush and it considers both
colour and shape (edges) for defining shapes. The Quick Selection tool
is smart – if you make a mistake and repaint over an unintended section,
the quick selection tool will learn from this and ignore that input
area in future strokes. Genius!
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