Lesson 2: Selection Tools

In this lesson students will learn about:

• magic wand tool
• marquee tools and feather option
• lasso tool
• selection menu
• extract option
• quick mask in selection

The selection tools in Adobe Photoshop are: magic wand, marquee, and lasso tools. Using these
selection tools, you can select certain part or shape of a picture, and move it to another picture.

When you use these tools to create a selection, you will have a blinking dash (also known as the
marching ants) surrounding your selected area. You can move this selected area to another
picture, using your move tool (the black arrow tool next to marquee tool).
1. Click on your move tool and roll over the selected area.
2. Make sure that your cursor will have a small scissors in it.
3. Drag and drop the area to your other picture / file.

The selection tools have the same basic options, which you can find below your menu. Out of all
the different properties from each of the tool, the feather option is the most commonly used.
Feathering allows the selected area to be blurry at the sides.

The picture above shows the properties for a marquee tool.

Other than these properties, more option for selection tools can be found under the menu:
Select.

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Magic Wand

The magic wand will create a selection based on colors. In its properties, you have the tolerance
option. The default value is 32. By setting the tolerance to lower value, it will become more
specific in selecting the color. The color will have to match exactly; hence your selection area will
be smaller. By setting the value to be higher, it will be less tolerance (it will create a selection on
a broader range of colors), resulting in bigger selection area.

Marquee Tools

The marquee tools have 4 options under it: rectangular marquee tool, elliptical marquee tool,
single row marquee tool, and single column marquee tool.

The tools, which are mostly used, are the rectangular and elliptical marquee tools.

The marquee tools have the feather option in its properties. If you want to use feather option,
always set the value first before creating your selection.

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If the feather value is 0 (no feathering) you will have a solid selection at the sides. If the value is
bigger than 0, then your selection will be blurry on the sides.

In using feathering, please consider the size of your picture. If your picture is small, please do not
apply such a big value for feather. If you have a pop up message “No pixels are more than 50%
selected”, that means your feather value is too big, hence no area of selection can be made. So
you need to reduce the value of your feather option.

Lasso Tool

Lasso tools allow you to create a free form selection. You can trace out the shape of a particular
object using the lasso tools. The tools under the lasso tools are: Lasso tool, Polygonal Lasso Tool,
and Magnetic Lasso Tool.

Lasso tool allows you to create your own area of selection. Use your mouse to draw your
selection area.

Polygonal lasso tool allows you to create a polygonal selection area.

Magnetic lasso tool allows you to trace out the outline of your object and create a selection
based on it.

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Some things to note in using the magnetic lasso tool:

Adjust the frequency to set how often it will leave a marking point. The higher the
frequency, the more marking points it will leave.

You can create your own marking point, by clicking on the picture.

To remove a wrong marking point, just click backspace.

Your ending point must click with your starting point. If you cannot do so, just
double click after you reach your last point.

Selection Menu

The selection menu contains more options in working with your area of selection.

Below are the explanations for some of the commonly used options.

Select inverse
When you create a selection, your area of selection is inside the blinking dash. If you want to
select the area outside your area of selection, then use select inverse. Normally what happen
when you select inverse, is that the blinking dash will also appear on the 4 sides of your picture.

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Color Range
This option is similar to your magic wand. It allows you to create selection in the entire picture
based on color. Using this option, you will be able to see what your selection area will be like.
When you click on color range, a pop up window will appear.

Use the fuzziness option to set the color tolerance.

Modify

The options under modify are:

Border: to create a bordered selection

Smooth: smoother your area of selection, especially selection that you do with lasso tool

Expand: increase your area of selection

Contract: decrease your area of selection

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Transform selection
This option will allow you to position your selection to other part of the picture; rotate your
selection area, as well as making the selection area bigger or smaller.

Save Selection, Load Selection

You can save your selection using the Save Selection option. You can save many selections area
of the same picture.

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You can use Load Selection to load all the different saved selection. Load selection has many
different options that you can experiment with, to come up with a unique selection area.

Example:

This selection is saved as one.

This selection is saved as two.

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When selection one and two are loaded together and Add to selection is chosen, this is the final
selection area:

Extract option

Extract option is useful for you to extract an object from its background. It is advisable to use this
option to work with shape / object, which is a bit hard to select using the selection tools, like the
lasso tools. For example: picture of a hairy dog. It will be quite difficult and tedious to create a
detailed selection using magnetic lasso tool because of the fur of the dog. So you can try using
the extract option.

The extract option can be found under the menu Filter  Extract.

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Once you choose extract, the extract window will pop up. The next steps are as follow:

1. By default your highlighter is selected. You can choose to set the brush into a smaller
size. Paint the outline of the area that you want to extract.

2. Click on the fill tool (located under your highlighter). Drop the color inside the outline that
you create earlier.

3. Click preview to see your extracted area. If you are satisfied, click OK.

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These are just the basic steps to extract an object. Try to experiment with all the other options,
which are available in the extract window to get better extract result.

Quick Mask

You can use quick mask to create a better and more detailed selection area. First you need to
create a selection area (use any of the selection tool). Click Edit in quick mask mode. This can
be found in your tool bar, just below your color option.

Once you do so, the area that you do not select will turn pink, while your selected area retains its
color (not to worry). Here you can paint your selection area (to add or remove the selection)
using your brush tool. You will notice your background and foreground color turn to black and
white.

Painting using the brush tool with the black color will allow you to remove your selection area,
while choosing the white color will allow you to add your selection area.

After you are done, you can click back Edit in standard mode.

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Try this simple exercise:
1. Use your marquee tool to create a selection on a picture. Set the feather to 0.
2. Click Edit in quick mask mode.
3. Go to Filter  Distort  Glass. Set your options and click OK.
4. You will see your selection area changes. Click Edit in standard mode.
5. Move this selection to another file.

See how interesting the effect is. You can try using other filter options, or using brushes.

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