Tutorial - 11 Ways to Make a Selection in Photoshop
Member Photoshop TutorialsPhotoshop Tutorial - 11 Ways to Make a Selection in Photoshop in the forums; Selections are needed to do just about anything for this website. A lot of people here have only done 3 ...
Tutorial - 11 Ways to Make a Selection in Photoshop
Selections are needed to do just about anything for this website. A lot of people here have only done 3 or 4 methods. I decided to make a tutorial that teaches how to do the 11 different ways to make a selection (that I know of, at least), and when to use them.
Before you read, I just want you to know that I did all of these in just a matter of days, so If you find errors, are confused, think I'm doing something wrong, or I'm doing an extra step, don't stall to mention it or ask me in a PM or post.
The Lasso Tool is the most well-known and easiest-to-use tool to make selections, but it is not very accurate, and you may spend more of your time correcting your selection, than actually selecting it.
First, open up your image (i'm using a picture of some douchebags smoking pot), select the layer you want to select, and choose the Lasso Tool from the Tools Palette.
Now, make click and drag the Lasso Tool around your image to make your selection. It doesn't need to be perfect. We will fix it up next.
Click the "Add to selection" button up at the Options toolbar, and circle the areas that you would like to add to your selection.
If your original selection went to far away from your picture, you can select the "Subtract from selection" button, right next to the "Add to selection button" and circle the areas you want to take out.
The Polygonal Lasso tool is like the regular Lasso Tool, exept every click you make creates a perfectly straight line to where your next click is. This is very useful for selecting objects with (duh) straight edges.
First, open up your image (i'm using a photo of a morbidly obese woman holding cereal which she shouldn't be eating), select the layer you want to select, and select the Polygonal Lasso Tool from the Tools Palette.
Now, zoom in on your picture and click on one point of your object. It will create a line which will follow your mouse wherever you put it. Click onto the next point to create a new line, and continue until your selection is done.
If you want to select more, you can go up to the Options toolbar, press one of the "Add or Subtract to selection" buttons, and use the Polygonal Lasso (or any other lasso) to make additions or remove parts of your selection.
I decided to add another dimension of the cereal box.
The Magnetic Lasso tool is a favorite among many Photoshop users, mainly because it makes making selections very quick and easy (most of the time). It operates like the Lasso tool, but sticks itself to the edges of what you want (usually), like a magnet. I mainly use this tool when I am selecting fairly complex pictures with a greater contrast between the colors. You shouldn't use this tool when selecting dark-on-dark colors or light-on-light colors.
First, open up your image (i'm using a photo of some loser who's so addicting to roleplaying, he decided to dress up and go to the e3 convention or something), select the layer you want to make a selection on, and choose the Magnetic Lasso tool.
Set the settings to about what I have here. The width is how far away your cursor can get from the edge for it to still cling to that edge. I have it set to 15, since I'm not very steady at it. The edge contrast is how different the edges have to be for the lasso to stick to one, and the frequency is how often another point is created. I leave it fairly high because if I mess up, I can just delete a few points.
Now, starting at one point, click and release your mouse, then drag it around the edge of the picture you want. If you mess up, like I did, press the delete key on your keyboard to delete the last point you made.
When you are done getting the outline, you can always go up the the Options Toolbar and select the one of the "Add or Subtract from selection" keys. Sometimes, when doing that, the magnetic lasso isn't always the best choice, so you can do it with any other lasso.
And that is how you make a selection with the Magnetic Lasso.
The Rectangle and Elliptical Marquee tool -- Beginner
The Rectangular and Elliptical Marquee tool is a very simple tool that creates (you guessed it) rectangular and ellipse-shaped selections. It's so simple, I shouldn't even be making a tutorial for it, but whatever. It should only be used for round or square selections.
First, open up an image (i'm using a sphere I made), click on the layer you want to select, and choose the Rectangular and Elliptical Marquee tool. I'm using the Ellipse Selection tool, just because... it's a circle.
Now, click and drag to select the sphere.
If you need to, you can go up to the Options toolbar and add or subtract from your selection. I removed the shiny spots.
And just for the hell of it, I clicked the "Add to selection" button and added this box to the bottom of the sphere. w00t.
That's how you make a selection with the Rectangular and Elliptical Marquee tools.
The Extract tool is probably the worst tool I've ever seen for making selections, and I highly do not reccomend it. The only thing I can imagine you could use it for and get decent results is on a photo with a black or white background (but then again, you could use the magic wand tool on the background, then invert the selection). My results on this tutorial are not very good, and if you find a better way of using this tool, send a PM my way.
First, open up your image (i'm using some crazy indian kung-po mofo), go to the Menu toolbar, and go to Filter> Extract.
Next, use the setting I have and highlight the edges of your image as best as you can. With the Smart Highlighting option selected, it sort of acts like a weak Magnetic Lasso.
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When you are done highlighting the edges, go over to the side of the menu and click the Fill tool button. Now fill in everything inside your blue lines. This is basically like the reverse of the Quick Mask. Everything in blue is what's supposed to be your selection. Press OK when you are done.
And there's uhh.... your selection?
My advise to you: use one of the 10 other ways to make a selection....
The Magic Wand tool is very useful or very stubborn, depending on the picture you are using it one. It should be used pictures with very few colors, single-colored backgrounds. Otherwise, it should not be used.
First, open up your picture (i'm using a bottle of cell-tech), select the layer you want to select, and click on the Magic Wand tool on the Tool Palette.
Next, set the tolerance level on the Options toolbar to around 20. Tolerance is how many pixels of color your selected pixel can be different to still be selected. Now, if the object you want selected has a single-colored or almost-single-colored background, select it. If your selection looks like this, you will have to lower the Tolerance so it only selects the background. You may have to hold the shift key while clicking (it toggle the "Add to selection" button). After your background is selected, press Control+Shift+I at the same time to invert your selection.
The custom shape tool makes shapes in the forms of "paths", which I will explain next in my Pen tool tutorial. These paths can be converted into selections which is what we're going to do.
First, open your image (I picked an overly-excited fat-boy who just purchased a new graphics card), select the layer you want to make a selection on, and choose the Custom Shape Tool on the Tools Palette. After you know how to use the Custom Shape Tool, you'll be able to use the other tools in that section.
Next, use the options that I have on the Options menu, except for the shape of your custom shape. These options will make your selection a path, which we can convert. Click and drag your mouse on the image to create a path in the shape of your custom shape.
With the path, there are a number of things you can do, but we want to convert it into a selection, so go down to the Layers Palette, go to the Paths tab, and click the "Load Path as a Selection" button.
The Pen tool is one of my favorite tools for making very accurate selections, but many Photoshop users dislike it for the time it takes to use it and the slight difficulty of using it. It should be used for images with many curves and straight lines with no jagged edges or fuzzy areas.
Before I tell you what to do, I am going to explain what this is. The Pen tool creates something called a "path" which can be used for a number of things. With paths, you can fill them in to make shapes, convert them to selections, or a number of other things. Paths consists of "anchor points" connected by lines, which can be curved or straight. Each anchor point has "direction lines." These direction lines show if the how much the curve curves, or if it is a point at a corner, there are no direction lines at all. Here is a rough diagram of them:
First, open up your image (i'm using some wanker I found on this forum), select the layer you want to make a selection on, and choose the Pen tool from the Tools menu.
Start out by clicking on one point. If the next point you make is a straight edge, click on it like you would with the Polygonal Lasso Tool. If it is a curve, click on it like you would with a straight line, but hold it and move the mouse to how you want the curve. If you want to switch from a curved line to a straight line, hold down the Alt key, and click the last point you made. That way, you can make a straight line. If you dont' do that your line will go to your point in a large curve.
If you mess up a curve or a straight line, you can hold down the Ctrl key, which toggles the mouse so you can move the point. When you move the point, you can also move the direction lines to change the angle of the curve. When you finally get all the way to the beginning again, click on the very first anchor point you made to complete the path.
When you are done, go down the the Layers Palette, and go to the Paths tab. Click on the "Load path as a selection" button, to load it as a selection.
The Color Range tool is what I think of as a beefed-up version of the magic wand. When you select a color in your image, it creates a mask (i'll cover masks in a later tutorial) which selects all the appearences of that color in the picture. Because of that, I only use it in small, low color pictures. You should use it in images with a small amount of colors or detail.
First, open up your image. I'm using a photochopz.com logo I created.
Next, go to Select> Color Range. This will open up a menu with options, and a preview box.
Now, load the settings to what I have. I find White Matte to be an easier setting to tell what's going on. You're going to need to use the "Add to selection" tool, so you might as well select it now. Now, click on the colors of your picture that you want to select. The colors that will be selected will show up white on your preview screen, and will show up in color on your actual picture.
The Quick Mask mode is a very useful way for making multiple selections, but for most people, is too time-consuming. I like to use it for more detailed photochopz, mainly because you can tell exactly what you are selecting easier. It is also useful for cleaning up difficult selections.
Before I tell you how to use one, I'm going to tell you what masks are. Masks are layers that you can place over your images so you can apply affects or make a selection in only the areas you want in your picture. Think of it like when professionals paint a car. Masks are like a large red transparent sheet placed over your car (your image), and where you take off some of the sheet (erase some of the mask) to reveal the car (picture), that is where your paint is going to hit (your selection will be made). So basically, in Quick Mask mode, the visible area of your mask is where your selection will be (like selecting where to paint).
First, open up your image (i'm using a squinty-eyed loser with a serious case of gyno), select the layer you want to make a selection on, and pick any selection tool (I picked the magnetic lasso).
Next, make a quick, rough selection of what you want to select. It does not matter how accurate it is, because you will be correcting it in a second.
Next, go down the the Tools toolbar and press the "Edit in Quick Mask Mode."
This will put the red, transparent layer over your entire image, except for your selection. This is where we will correct your selection. The mask responds correctly to 2 colors. They are black and white. To add to your selection, choose a fairly hard-edged paintbrush and press the D key to make your foreground and background black and white. Press the X key to automatically switch the foreground and background to switch time. Make the foreground black and begin to erase your selection. Use a smaller brush when necessary. If you need a feathered selection, use a very soft brush.
Now, if your selection went to far into your picture and you want to take some of it away, make your brush white (switch the foreground and background by pressing X), and start to fill in the missed areas you wanted to select. Think of the white like an eraser, erasing the mask where you don't want it.
Make sure you get everywhere you want to select back to the picture's orginal color and everywhere you don't want to select covered in the red.
Now, click on the "Edit in Standard Mode" button, on the Tools toolbar.
The last form of making a selection is a pretty advanced way that you can use for making extremely detailed selection, especially for wispy hair and fuzz and things that other selection tools can't catch. The results of this tutorial depend soley on the quality of your picture (the hair needs to have a good amount of contrast from the background) and THE TIME AND EFFORT YOU SPEND ON IT. There is one step on this tutorial that you have to have perfect, or else your selection won't be good. Before I made this tutorial, I spent a good 15 minutes making my selection to test this picture, and everything came out ABSOLUTELY PERFECTLY. The hair was great. But, when I was making this tutorial, I slacked off a bit, and it isn't as good and the hair wasn't right. The results of this tutorial depend on YOU.
First, before I begin, I just want you to know what kind of picture you'll need. You need to have a picture that the subject (especially their hair) has a good contrast from the background. If you have a darker person, you need to make sure they're against a lighter background or else this isn't going to work easily. I'm going to say that right now. If the hair blends in with the background a little bit or it's almost the same color, forget it. It won't work right. You need a dark person standing, for instance at the beach during the daylight or against a white wall. THis goes for objects too. This will only work well if they have contrast a bit from the background. You can still do it if the object does not contrast very much from the background, but it is going to take a lot of cleaning up.
First, open up your pictures (i'm using a picture of me as a child), and go to the Channels tab on the Layers palette.
NOw, there should be 3 different images. The full color one, the Red, the Green, and the Blue. Choose the one that has the most contrast from what you want selected and what you don't. I picked Blue because I am much darker than the background and it shows the most contrast. You can also do if as if you were lighter than the background and one of them showed you much lighter.
After you select one, right click it, select duplicate, and name it mask.
Now go to Image> Adjustments> Levels and adjust the Shadows, Highlights and Midtones until your image is mostly black, white, and gray and shows a lot of contrast. You should be black or white and your background should be the opposite. Adjust them so you are positive you won't have to erase anything around the hair.
Now take a hard-edges paintbrush and start cleaning up your mask. I'm cleaning up the background so it's all white.
When you are done, select the background with the magic wand tool and invert your selection. Everything you want should be selected.
Now, clean up the inside of your selection. Since it is selected, you can go ask close to you want to the edges. The one thing you shouldn't fill in, though is the hair areas and stuff. You should leave them gray, like the step where you adjusted the levels did. The gray areas will be feathered, just like you want the hair to be.
Now since I am done, select the background again with the Magic Wand (tolerance of 10-25), and invert it again.
By the way, when you are done making a selection and you want to save it for later, go to Selection> Save as Selection. That will save it as an alpha channel. When you save your picture save it as a .psd document. The next time you open it up, you just have to go to Selection> Load Selection, and load it.
Tutorial - 11 Ways to Make a Selection in Photoshop 
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