Photoshop also contains some automated “magic” selection tools. Believe it or not, these tools are designed to make selections with just one click. After you start using them, you’ll see for yourself that they truly do work like magic!
However, before you get too excited, I should warn you that there are a few stipulations. The magic tools are designed to select large areas of solid color. This makes them perfect for removing skies and solid-color backgrounds—not busy, detailed areas of an image. Also, each magic selection tool has its own set of controls, and you need to spend some time tweaking them (or the image itself) before you can make any magic happen. Nevertheless, when used with the proper settings, these tools can be huge time-savers.
The Magic Wand
The Magic Wand allows you to select large areas of color in an image with a single click. This makes it the perfect tool for compositing images. By default, the Magic Wand is now hidden underneath the Quick Selection tool in the Tools palette. To access the Magic Wand tool, click the Quick Selection tool icon in the Tools palette and select Magic Wand Tool from the flyout menu. You can also toggle between these two tools by pressing Shift+W on your keyboard.
Before clicking in the area of the photo that you want to select, first check the Options palette to make sure the proper settings are enabled. Here’s a quick rundown of what each of them does:
Tolerance If an area to be selected varies in brightness, the value entered here determines how much of the surrounding area the wand will select. The point where you click will have a specific luminosity value, and the Tolerance setting determines the range of luminosity values that will also be selected.
Anti-alias Enabling this option softens the edges of your selection. In general, you will want to keep this option turned on at all times when making selections with any tool.
Contiguous Enabling this option tells the Magic Wand to select adjacent regions of color. To select similar but nonadjacent regions, keep this option turned off.
Sample All Layers When working with multilayered files, enabling this option allows you to select regions of color on all layers.
The Tolerance value you should use depends on the range of luminosity values present in the colored area that you are trying to select. The wider the range of values, the higher the setting needs to be in order to make the selection with one click. Even though the sky background is clearly blue, if you look closely, there are many variations of blue throughout and they are interspersed with the white of the clouds. These variations are measured in luminosity values. By default, the Tolerance control is set to select luminosity values 32 shades lighter or darker than the initial color selected where you clicked with the wand. This means that if you click in a neutral area of the sky background with the Magic Wand, you might not select the entire sky. When this happens, you have three options:
- Undo the selection (by pressing F/Ctrl+Z, or choosing Edit --> Undo). Then raise the Tolerance value to something higher than 32 and try again.
- Modify the selection by using the Select --> Grow Or Select --> Similar commands.
- Shift+click the unselected area to add it to the selection.
If the opposite happens, and you select more than the intended area, undo, decrease the Tolerance value, and try again.
The Magic Eraser
Although it’s technically not a selection tool, the Magic Eraser makes it extremely easy to isolate images from a solid-color background. You can think of this as a sort of reverse selection. The tool is designed to erase large areas of color in an image with a single click. In many instances, this makes it an even better tool than the Magic Wand for replacing backgrounds.
To access the Magic Eraser tool, click and hold the currently visible Eraser tool icon in the Tools palette and select Magic Eraser Tool from the pop-up menu that appears. You can also toggle between the Eraser, Background Eraser, and Magic Eraser tools by pressing Shift+E.
The Magic Eraser includes the same Options palette controls as the Magic Wand plus an additional Opacity setting that allows you to make a region of color translucent (instead of erasing it completely). Before clicking in the area of the photo that you want to erase, first check the Options palette and make sure that the proper settings are enabled.
To erase the entire background the Anti-aliased and Contiguous options needed to be selected. As with the Magic Wand tool, the proper Tolerance value depends on the range of luminosity values present in the colored background that you are trying to erase. The wider the range of values, the higher the setting needs to be to erase the area with one click. Like any sky background contains many luminosity values. Remember, by default the Tolerance control is set to select luminosity values 32 levels lighter or darker than the initial clicking point. If you click in a neutral area of the background and are using the default Tolerance setting, you may not erase all of it. When this happens, you have two options:
- Undo the erasure, and then raise the Tolerance value to something higher than 32 and try again.
- Click in the remaining areas to erase them. You can raise or lower the Tolerance value as needed when using this method.
It’s also possible to raise the Tolerance value too high and accidentally erase pixels in the object that you’re trying to isolate. When this happens, undo, decrease the Tolerance value, and try again. The Magic Eraser also has the tendency to leave stray pixels that are difficult to see over the default transparent, gray-and-white checkerboard. To reveal any remaining artifacts, it helps to change the default preference settings for this transparency grid. From the Photoshop menu (Mac) or the Edit menu (Windows), choose Preferences --> Transparency & Gamut. In the Transparency Settings section of the dialog box that appears, click the bottom-left color swatch and change it to a bright red by using the Color Picker. Click OK to close the Color Picker and then click the color swatch on the right in Preferences dialog box. Proceed to change the color to a dark red. Click OK to close the Preferences dialog.
With the transparent checkerboard color changed to red, it’s much easier to see the artifacts left behind by the Magic Eraser. To eliminate these artifacts, undo (press F/Ctrl+Z) and increase the Tolerance setting. Click in the background area again to erase it, and inspect the image for any leftover pixels.
The Quick Selection Tool
The new Quick Selection tool is great for editing high-resolution images in a fast-paced workflow. It allows you to make “magic” selections by using a brush. This means that you can make quick selections without having to trace the image. As you paint inside the portion of the image that you want to select, the tool recognizes areas of high contrast and selects them for you. It behaves a lot like the Magic Wand tool, only without having to apply any Tolerance settings. By default, the Quick Selection tool is grouped with the Magic Wand tool in the Tools palette. To access the Quick Selection tool, click its icon in the Tools palette, or click and hold the currently visible tool in the set and select Quick Selection Tool from the flyout menu. You can also toggle between these two tools by pressing Shift+W on your keyboard.
Before clicking in the area of the photo that you want to select, first choose a brush diameter setting (in pixels) from the Brush drop-down list in the Options palette. Type in a number or move the slider left or right to set the diameter value. Think of the diameter setting as a type of Tolerance value (if you’re not sure what Tolerance is or how it works, see the preceding Magic Wand section). The value you should use depends on the range of luminosity values present in the image area you are trying to select. The wider the range of values, the higher the setting needs to be to select the area with one quick brushstroke—just as it is when working with the Magic Wand or Magic Eraser tools. To select the shirt the brush diameter was set to 80 pixels, and a quick brushstroke was applied to the image area. As you click and drag with the mouse, the selection grows. Painting near the edges of an object causes the selection area to expand and follow the shape’s contours.
After your initial selection is made, you can subtract from it by pressing Option/Alt and dragging the brush over the selected areas. If you’d like to add to the selection, press Shift and apply more brushstrokes. In general, the Quick Selection tool works best when used to select objects with well-defined edges. Try to use this tool to select detailed, low-contrast images, and you’ll soon learn how painfully slow the Quick Selection tool can really be. The inability to set a Tolerance level limits the types of selections you can make quickly and accurately.
However, before you get too excited, I should warn you that there are a few stipulations. The magic tools are designed to select large areas of solid color. This makes them perfect for removing skies and solid-color backgrounds—not busy, detailed areas of an image. Also, each magic selection tool has its own set of controls, and you need to spend some time tweaking them (or the image itself) before you can make any magic happen. Nevertheless, when used with the proper settings, these tools can be huge time-savers.
The Magic Wand
The Magic Wand allows you to select large areas of color in an image with a single click. This makes it the perfect tool for compositing images. By default, the Magic Wand is now hidden underneath the Quick Selection tool in the Tools palette. To access the Magic Wand tool, click the Quick Selection tool icon in the Tools palette and select Magic Wand Tool from the flyout menu. You can also toggle between these two tools by pressing Shift+W on your keyboard.
Before clicking in the area of the photo that you want to select, first check the Options palette to make sure the proper settings are enabled. Here’s a quick rundown of what each of them does:
Tolerance If an area to be selected varies in brightness, the value entered here determines how much of the surrounding area the wand will select. The point where you click will have a specific luminosity value, and the Tolerance setting determines the range of luminosity values that will also be selected.
Anti-alias Enabling this option softens the edges of your selection. In general, you will want to keep this option turned on at all times when making selections with any tool.
Contiguous Enabling this option tells the Magic Wand to select adjacent regions of color. To select similar but nonadjacent regions, keep this option turned off.
Sample All Layers When working with multilayered files, enabling this option allows you to select regions of color on all layers.
The Tolerance value you should use depends on the range of luminosity values present in the colored area that you are trying to select. The wider the range of values, the higher the setting needs to be in order to make the selection with one click. Even though the sky background is clearly blue, if you look closely, there are many variations of blue throughout and they are interspersed with the white of the clouds. These variations are measured in luminosity values. By default, the Tolerance control is set to select luminosity values 32 shades lighter or darker than the initial color selected where you clicked with the wand. This means that if you click in a neutral area of the sky background with the Magic Wand, you might not select the entire sky. When this happens, you have three options:
- Undo the selection (by pressing F/Ctrl+Z, or choosing Edit --> Undo). Then raise the Tolerance value to something higher than 32 and try again.
- Modify the selection by using the Select --> Grow Or Select --> Similar commands.
- Shift+click the unselected area to add it to the selection.
If the opposite happens, and you select more than the intended area, undo, decrease the Tolerance value, and try again.
The Magic Eraser
Although it’s technically not a selection tool, the Magic Eraser makes it extremely easy to isolate images from a solid-color background. You can think of this as a sort of reverse selection. The tool is designed to erase large areas of color in an image with a single click. In many instances, this makes it an even better tool than the Magic Wand for replacing backgrounds.
To access the Magic Eraser tool, click and hold the currently visible Eraser tool icon in the Tools palette and select Magic Eraser Tool from the pop-up menu that appears. You can also toggle between the Eraser, Background Eraser, and Magic Eraser tools by pressing Shift+E.
The Magic Eraser includes the same Options palette controls as the Magic Wand plus an additional Opacity setting that allows you to make a region of color translucent (instead of erasing it completely). Before clicking in the area of the photo that you want to erase, first check the Options palette and make sure that the proper settings are enabled.
To erase the entire background the Anti-aliased and Contiguous options needed to be selected. As with the Magic Wand tool, the proper Tolerance value depends on the range of luminosity values present in the colored background that you are trying to erase. The wider the range of values, the higher the setting needs to be to erase the area with one click. Like any sky background contains many luminosity values. Remember, by default the Tolerance control is set to select luminosity values 32 levels lighter or darker than the initial clicking point. If you click in a neutral area of the background and are using the default Tolerance setting, you may not erase all of it. When this happens, you have two options:
- Undo the erasure, and then raise the Tolerance value to something higher than 32 and try again.
- Click in the remaining areas to erase them. You can raise or lower the Tolerance value as needed when using this method.
It’s also possible to raise the Tolerance value too high and accidentally erase pixels in the object that you’re trying to isolate. When this happens, undo, decrease the Tolerance value, and try again. The Magic Eraser also has the tendency to leave stray pixels that are difficult to see over the default transparent, gray-and-white checkerboard. To reveal any remaining artifacts, it helps to change the default preference settings for this transparency grid. From the Photoshop menu (Mac) or the Edit menu (Windows), choose Preferences --> Transparency & Gamut. In the Transparency Settings section of the dialog box that appears, click the bottom-left color swatch and change it to a bright red by using the Color Picker. Click OK to close the Color Picker and then click the color swatch on the right in Preferences dialog box. Proceed to change the color to a dark red. Click OK to close the Preferences dialog.
With the transparent checkerboard color changed to red, it’s much easier to see the artifacts left behind by the Magic Eraser. To eliminate these artifacts, undo (press F/Ctrl+Z) and increase the Tolerance setting. Click in the background area again to erase it, and inspect the image for any leftover pixels.
The Quick Selection Tool
The new Quick Selection tool is great for editing high-resolution images in a fast-paced workflow. It allows you to make “magic” selections by using a brush. This means that you can make quick selections without having to trace the image. As you paint inside the portion of the image that you want to select, the tool recognizes areas of high contrast and selects them for you. It behaves a lot like the Magic Wand tool, only without having to apply any Tolerance settings. By default, the Quick Selection tool is grouped with the Magic Wand tool in the Tools palette. To access the Quick Selection tool, click its icon in the Tools palette, or click and hold the currently visible tool in the set and select Quick Selection Tool from the flyout menu. You can also toggle between these two tools by pressing Shift+W on your keyboard.
Before clicking in the area of the photo that you want to select, first choose a brush diameter setting (in pixels) from the Brush drop-down list in the Options palette. Type in a number or move the slider left or right to set the diameter value. Think of the diameter setting as a type of Tolerance value (if you’re not sure what Tolerance is or how it works, see the preceding Magic Wand section). The value you should use depends on the range of luminosity values present in the image area you are trying to select. The wider the range of values, the higher the setting needs to be to select the area with one quick brushstroke—just as it is when working with the Magic Wand or Magic Eraser tools. To select the shirt the brush diameter was set to 80 pixels, and a quick brushstroke was applied to the image area. As you click and drag with the mouse, the selection grows. Painting near the edges of an object causes the selection area to expand and follow the shape’s contours.
After your initial selection is made, you can subtract from it by pressing Option/Alt and dragging the brush over the selected areas. If you’d like to add to the selection, press Shift and apply more brushstrokes. In general, the Quick Selection tool works best when used to select objects with well-defined edges. Try to use this tool to select detailed, low-contrast images, and you’ll soon learn how painfully slow the Quick Selection tool can really be. The inability to set a Tolerance level limits the types of selections you can make quickly and accurately.
The Magic Selection Tools
![The Magic Selection Tools]()
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