The Selection Tools In Photoshop

The Selection Tools In Photoshop

In this article I’ll explain some of the different and powerful selection tools that are available in Photoshop. This guide is aimed at beginners, but can hopefully provide a few extra pointers for more advanced users. Personally I find it very easy to get stuck using only one selection tool, when it can be beneficial to experiment with several in your work.

The Marquee Tools:

The Marquee Tools consist of the Rectangle, Elliptical, Single Row and Single Column selection tools. These are the most basic selection tools in Photoshop. The keyboard shortcut for these tools is the letter ‘M’.

The Rectangle Tool

The Rectangle tool allows you to draw rectangles or squares. Click and drag on your page to draw a square. You can hold the key, ‘Shift’ whilst you are dragging out your cursor which will create a perfectly shaped square. You can also hold the key, ‘Alt’ which will enable you to draw from the centre of the square instead of the corner.
If you’d like to move the square’s position when you are dragging it out, hold down ‘Space’, move the square to your desired position and then release ‘Space’.

The Elliptical Tool

This tool allows you to draw circles & ellipses. Like the Rectangle Tool you are able to hold the keys, ‘Shift, Alt and Space’ to edit the circle when you are drawing it.

The Single Row & Single Column Tools

The Single Row Tool and the Single Column Tool allows you to select a single row of pixels across the image. All you do is click on the image and it will automatically draw a line the length of your document.

The Lasso Tools

The Lasso Tools consist of the Lasso, Polygonal and Magnetic selection tools. The shortcut for these tools is the letter, ‘L’.

Lasso Tool

The Lasso Tool is a quick way to select an area but doesn’t allow you to select it precisely. All you do is click, hold and draw to create a selection. After you release your click the selection completes itself.

Polygonal Lasso Tool

This tool lets you create more accurate lines as you create straight lines so you have more control of what you want to select. This tool is much more flexible compared to the Lasso Tool. To start using this Tool all you do is click onto your picture and then start clicking around your area you want to select. With this tool you do not have click and drag. To finish the selection you can click onto the 1st point where you started off or double click anywhere on the picture, as this will draw a straight line to the 1st point.

Magnetic Lasso Tool

This tool is different to the other Lasso Tools as it traces the area for you. I’ll be tracing this image from here
This tool works a lot better with images like this one, as there are only two colours. It isn’t generally that precise when working with more detailed pictures, but it can be more effective when used with the Quick Mask (discussed later in this article) as you’re able to fine-tune the selection.
To start using this tool, click on to your document and start moving your mouse. You’ll notice that the line will start to trace around the image. To finish the selection click onto your 1st point where you clicked or double click and the line will join up to the 1st point automatically.

The Magic Wand

When you click onto your picture the Wand will select similar colours around it. Your Tolerance value at the top of the screen determines the range of colours that are selected. A low Tolerance value of 10 will select 10 darker and 10 lighter luminance levels from where you clicked. A high Tolerance value does the opposite. It will select a large range of colours.

Tolerance value of 10

Tolerance value of 100