Selections made easy
Martin Evening gives a quick class on stress-free ways to create selections in Photoshop
Making selections is an essential Photoshop skill. Selections can be used to select a specific area you wish to copy or edit, or to create a more permanent mask. How accurate that selection needs to be depends on what you want to do with it. But creating selections doesn’t have to be difficult. Although some subjects may require the use of pen paths to accurately define a mask outline, there are plenty of times where the quick and easy methods are all you need to create a basic or initial selection in Photoshop. For example, while the Magic Wand may be considered something of a blunt instrument, for some images the Magic Wand can still be the quickest way to obtain an instant selection. It is also important to bear in mind here that the Select and Mask feature in Photoshop can be used to refine any selection. Make a simple
click with the Magic Wand to create an initial selection, and then click on the Select and Mask button in the Magic Wand tool Options bar to open the Select and Mask dialog where you can fine-tune the original selection. In these two steps you can end up with a fairly sophisticated mask. For example, the main image shows how a Magic Wand selection, modified using Select and Mask, could be used as the basis for a layer mask applied to a separate sky image layer.
Magic Wand alternatives include the Color Range command, which can be used to create more advanced colour selections. Here, there is a Fuzziness slider that is similar to the Magic Wand’s Tolerance slider. If the Localized Color Clusters box is checked, Color Range can more accurately merge the colour sample data from multiple sample points. Also, when this is enabled, the Range slider can be used to determine which pixels are selected based on their distance from the sample points. You’ll find that the above description will make more sense if you try opening Color Range, then choose different sample points in the image and play with the two sliders to see how these affect the colour selection mask. The Quick Selection tool is like an advanced Magic Wand tool. As you keep clicking and dragging