Converting a Selection into a Work Path

If you’ve made a selection by using another tool—such as the Magnetic Lasso or the Quick Selection tool—and you’d like to convert it into a path, click the Make Work Path From Selection Path button at the bottom of the Paths palette.

You can also choose Make Work Path from the palette menu. By converting a selection into a path, you’re basically telling Photoshop that you’d like to convert a soft-edged selection into a hard-edged one. When using the palette menu command for converting, a dialog box appears that allows you to apply a Tolerance setting. This setting tells Photoshop exactly where the edges of the hard-edged path should be. Smaller Tolerance settings ensure a more accurate path conversion. It’s best to leave this setting at the default value of 2, or even reduce it to 1.

Note that the Make Work Path From Selection Path button uses whatever Tolerance setting was applied last. If you’d like to access the dialog when using this conversion method, simply Option/Alt+click the button. Although the Make Work Path From Selection command is a quick and easy way to generate a path, the results can often produce jagged edges or rounded corners. When this happens, you must modify the path with the Pen tool. You may find that it takes you longer to modify paths generated from selections than it does to draw them from scratch.