Photoshop Selections: Magic Wand tool

Magic Wand Tool

  The Magic Wand tool makes its selections based on a colour range in an image. The extent of the range depends on the options you set.
To use the Magic Wand tool, click in the image on a colour that you want to select. Photoshop will compare the value of the pixel you clicked on with other pixels in the image and will add other pixels to the selection if they meet the criteria set in the Tool Options bar.

Magic Wand Tool Options

Selection Options

These four buttons allow you to:

• create a new selection,
• add to a selection,
• subtract from a selection, or
• intersect with another selection.
  

Tolerance

Tolerance will increase or decrease a colour range for the selection. If you wanted to select all the orange in the cat image, you could increase this number. If you wanted to select a narrower colour range, you would decrease the value.

Anti-alias

This option will apply anti-aliasing to the selection that you draw. Anti-aliasing will provide a smooth and crisp edge around the selection.

Contiguous

When turned on, this setting will limit the selection to pixels that are next to each other and within the designated tolerance.

Sample All Layers

This option will make a selection using all of the layers in the Photoshop image. This is disabled by default so only pixels on the current layer will be selected.

Baskets under $30

Set the Tolerance to 0 and enable Anti-alias and Contiguous.

Click once anywhere inside the rose. You'll probably select just a single pixel. At most, only a few adjacent pixels will be selected. Setting the tolerance to 0 means that only adjacent pixels containing exactly the same RGB value as the pixel clicked on will be included in the resulting selection.
Deselect by pressing Ctrl-D (Cmd-D).

Set the Tolerance to 32, a generally good setting for selection tolerance.



 Click on the lower-left petal of the rose. Your selection look something like the example shown here. You can keep increasing the Tolerance value to include more pixels in your selection or you can use multiple selections - a topic that will be covered later in this module.
Deselect by pressing Ctrl-D (Cmd-D).



 Disable the Contiguous option and click on the same petal as before. This time the Magic Wand selected pixels matching the Tolerance setting throughout the image.

You could use multiple selections to successfully select the entire rose.
Spend $50 at Mixbook.com and get $10 of Your Next Order

Enjoy.

Artzz Luv