Quick selection tool define

It is incredibly hard to understand by a beginner and we need to put a lot of effort in order to understand even a part of it. Photoshop is really a tough thing if you have used it only a few times. But the reality is that the Adobe Photoshop developers are really trying hard to make it more user-friendly so that even a beginner can use it within a short span of time. Quick Selection Tool in Photoshop is an example of such efforts.

This tool can sometimes make your selection incredibly easy and if nothing is against you, you can select the desired area within 5 seconds. Quick Selection Tool basically works on the principle of change in colors.

As soon as it detects a sharp change in color, it discards its expansion. It may sound confusing now but you will understand it as soon as you complete the reading. Here I want to select the sky. As you can see that there is a huge difference between the sky and the foreground.

They can also then select the white clouds here easily because of low contrast. Color Range command also works here but it may give undesired output due to the clouds. If you look in the Options Bar along the top of the screen, you'll see a series of three icons which let us switch between the tool's three selection modes from left to right - New selection , Add to selection and Subtract from selection.

The "Add to selection" option middle one is already chosen for us, since the whole point of the Quick Selection Tool is to continue adding to the selection until you've selected everything you need:. There's two ways to use the Quick Selection Tool. One is to simply click on different areas of the image just like we would with the Magic Wand, and just as I did a moment ago to begin my selection.

The more common way, though, is to click and drag over the area you need to select as if you were painting with a brush. As you drag, Photoshop continuously analyzes the area, comparing color, tone and texture, and does its best job to figure out what it is you're trying to select, often with amazing results.

To add to my initial selection, then, I'll simply click and drag along the left edge of the sweater. The area I drag over is added to the selection. As long as I keep the cursor inside the sweater and don't drag over the sky or the trees in the background, only the sweater itself gets added:. If I do accidentally extend my cursor into the background area, the background gets added to the selection as well, which isn't what I want. A bit later on, we'll see how to remove unwanted areas of a selection with the Quick Selection Tool, but a good habit to get into here is to not try to select everything in a single drag.

If you do, and you make a mistake and need to undo it, you'll undo everything you've done. Using a series of short drags, releasing your mouse button between each one, is a better and safer way to work:. Resizing The Cursor If you have a large area to select, you may want to increase the size of the cursor so you won't need to drag as much I know, us Photoshop users can be a lazy bunch sometimes.

Likewise, selecting smaller areas often requires a smaller cursor. In this handy guide, we've shared how to use Photoshop's Quick Selection tool to isolate areas of your image based on color, tone, and texture. Arguably more advanced than the Magic Wand, the Quick Selection tool is great at finding the edges of objects, so you can simply draw your selection and Photoshop will do most of the heavy lifting.

Once you get the hang of how Quick Selection works, it can be one of the most powerful tools in your Photoshop arsenal. Making a Selection 1. First, load your current Photoshop project and choose the Quick Selection tool from the Tools panel it looks like a paintbrush drawing a dotted circle. You can also press the W key on your keyboard to select it. Let's say you want to select the subject in your photograph, so that she's isolated from the background.

You can find it on the tool panel on the left of your screen. It should be the fourth option below the Polygonal Lasso Tool. The quick selection icon should look like a paintbrush with dotted lines around the tip.

They all work similarly but with varying levels of precision depending on the subject. The quick selection tool is perfect for choosing an object in the photo with an irregular shape. Meanwhile, the object selection tool is best for objects with uniform shape. And finally, we have the magic wand tool which you need to use for objects with lots of nooks and crannies.

Resize your image to a manageable size to keep your computer working efficiently. There are a few different Photoshop selection tools , as we mentioned earlier. Keep adding to it by continuing to drag the cursor within the area.

To deselect large areas, hold down the Alt Windows or Option Mac key as you drag the cursor around the area you want to remove. Unlock the Layer in the Layer menu at the lower right of your screen. Right-click on it and click Duplicate Layer. Click on the eye icon on the bottom Layer to hide it this hidden lower Layer is a back-up in case of Photoshop disasters. At this point in the process, I tidy up my photograph using the Select and Mask tool.

Click on Select and Mask at the top of your screen. Adjust the size, hardness, and spacing of the tool.