12 Selection Tools in Photoshop You Need to Know About

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If you’re a photographer, then you know that selecting the right tools is essential for getting the best results. In this article, we’ll take a look at twelve of the most important selection tools in Photoshop. We’ll discuss what each tool does, and we’ll provide some tips on how to use them effectively.

Where Can I Find the Photoshop Selection Tools?

Many of the selection tools in Photoshop are on the toolbar nested with similar tools.

When you choose a selection tool, more options appear across the top of the workspace. Options often include a set of icons describing how new selections will interact with existing ones. The first, a square, draws a new selection each time. The second, overlapping squares, adds to previous selections. The third, a filled and an empty square, subtracts the new selection from the previous. You can also subtract by holding the option key and making a new selection. The fourth, overlapping squares, keeps only the area shared by the new and previous selections.

Options also include settings for thickening or feathering of the border. Clicking the anti-aliasing box smooths the edges. The Select and Mask button will create a masking layer using your selection (Option + Ctrl or ⌘R).

Photoshop also has a Select drop-down menu. Some of the choices are selection tools. Others modify selection tools found in the toolbar. Select All is a useful tool (Ctrl or ⌘A), as is the Deselect command (Shift + Ctrl or ⌘D).

In Photoshop, a selected area is bordered by ‘marching ants’. This is a dashed line that appears to move. By default, the selected area is within the line of marching ants. But you have the option to invert it. Go to the Select drop-down menu and choose Select > Inverse (Shift + Ctrl or ⌘I). This selects everything outside the marching ants. It can be a bit confusing because since it does not look like anything changed. The marching ants are in the same place.

1. Marquee Tools

The Marquee tools let you drag a shape over an area to select it. You can choose a rectangular marquee tool, an elliptical marquee tool, or two single line shapes. Choose the marquee you want to use, click on your image and drag the shape to size. The selection appears when you release it. Hold the Shift key when dragging to create a square or a circle. By default, you drag the shape from a corner. Hold the Alt or Option key to create a shape starting in the centre.

In the options bar, you can change the style from Normal to Fixed Ratio. This creates a square or a circle. You can also choose a pre-defined size for the selection.

2. Lasso

The Lasso tool lets you draw freely around the object you want to select. The tool is not very precise. Use it when you want to make a rough selection.

3. Polygonal Lasso

The Polygonal Lasso selects shapes that consist of straight lines. These can be more complicated shapes than just squares or rectangles. Click and drag along one edge of a shape to create a line. To turn a corner, click once. The tool freezes the line at that point and lets you change direction. Next, hold the Shift key while dragging to make a horizontal or vertical line. The selection shape completes when you return to where you started or double click.

4. Magnetic Lasso

The Magnetic Lasso tool works like the Lasso. First, draw around the object that you want to select. As you draw, the line is drawn to edges, like a magnet, to make a more precise selection. This tool works well when you are an object with a lot of curves.

Click one edge of the object that you want to select. Then, drag the line around the shape. Pins appear where the tool has locked onto an edge. The selection shape completes when you click on where you started or double click.

The Magnetic tool is really a circle. It is easier to see this if you turn on Caps Lock. Photoshop looks inside the circle for an edge. Making the Width larger in the options bar makes the circle bigger. You can also adjust the contrast to make it easier for the program to find an edge. Frequency is the number of pins placed around the edge. Change this if you want to see more or fewer pins. But you can click to add a pin at any point along the line.

5. Object Selection

Adobe introduced Object Selection in the 2019 version of Photoshop. At first, it seems to work like the Marquee tool. First, draw a rectangle or lasso around the object that you want to select. Next, Photoshop analyses the contents of the shape to find an object within. The program then refines the selection around the subject.

6. Quick Selection

The Quick Selection tool is a fast way of selecting a well-defined object. Click inside the object you want to select. Photoshop scans for colours and edges and expands the selection to include similar pixels. Add to the selection by clicking on another area of the object. Or drag the cursor, painting in the selection.

The Quick Selection tool works like a brush tool. You can change the size, hardness, spacing, and angle of the brush stroke. Click the + icon to add to the selection. Click the – sign or hold the option key to erase parts of the selection.

7. Magic Wand

Use the Magic Wand tool to select colours. Click on any colour in your image, and the program highlights all areas containing this colour. Tolerance in the options bar changes how precise the colour selection is.

At a low Tolerance, colour selection is precise. At a higher tolerance, the program selects colours like the one you picked. You can click on a second colour to expand the selection. Hold the option key and click on a colour to erase it from the selection.

If the Contiguous box unticked, colours throughout the frame are selected. Ticking the Contiguous box limits the selection to colours near the one chosen.

8. Select Color Range

Color Range selection can work like the Magic Wand tool. Select your entire image (Ctrl or ⌘A) and choose Color Range from the Select drop-down menu Select > Select Color Range. A new window opens. Select Sampled Colors from the drop-down menu and click on a colour in your image. At higher levels of Fuzziness, similar colours are selected. You can also choose families of colours, like reds, from the drop-down menu. A thumbnail shows you a preview. White areas are selected. Grey areas are partially selected.

This tool can also select skin tones. Click both the Localized Color Clusters and the Detect Faces box. Then choose skin tones from the drop-down menu.

You can also select highlights, mid-tones, or shadows. Copy and paste selections onto a new layer to create simple luminosity masks. Then, apply separate layer adjustments to each tonality.

9. Select Focus Area

To select in-focus areas of your image, go to Select > Focus Area. In the window that opens, you can adjust the focus range. Move the In-Focus Range slider to relax focus parameters or select a more precise focus. You can change the preview mode and how you want to output the selection.

10. Select Subject

The Select Subject tool is like the Object Selection tool. But it is easier to use. Choose the Select drop-down menu and click Select > Subject. Photoshop scans your image and selects likely subjects. Refine the selection using another tool.

11. Select Sky

Before Adobe added a Sky Replacement tool to Photoshop 2021, you had to mask skies manually. This selection tool helped make the job easier. Open the Select drop-down menu and choose Select > Sky. Photoshop identifies the sky, even if there are interferences, like leafy trees.

12. Paintbrush in Quick Mask Mode

If you prefer to use the paintbrush tool to make selections, use the Quick Mask mode. Click the icon found at the bottom of the toolbar or the Q hotkey. You can also open a Quick Mask by going to the Select drop-down menu and choosing Select > Edit in Quick Mask.

With a paintbrush, mask areas you do not want to be selected. You can change the size and softness of the brush and opacity and flow—the mask shows as a red overlay. If you make a mistake, toggle the paintbrush to white to erase the overlay.

Double click the mask icon to switch colours and opacity. You can also choose to have the mask show the selected areas rather than the unselected areas. Click the icon or Q again to see the selected area bordered by marching ants.

Conclusion

Photoshop has over a dozen tools to help you select objects and areas of your image. Some tools are more precise. Others let you quickly select. But, of course, the best tool is the one that quickly and accurately makes the selection you want.

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Popular Tools in Photoshop: The Marquee Tools

How to use the Marquee Tools in Photoshop – overview of the tool options and how to use the marquee tools to create complex graphic shape combinations.

Photoshop’s Marquee Tools offer quick ways of using popular geometric shapes to select parts of images to copy, cut, or create with.

The tools are easy to use and on the surface appear to be pretty limited, but there are a few “secrets” that expose the sophisticated technology behind the tools that makes them easy and intuitive to work with.

The Marquee Tools are located just under the Move Tool in the Vertical Tool Bar – second from the top.

There are four tools included in the Marquee Tool Box: the Rectangular Marquee, the Elliptical Marquee, the Single Row Marquee, and the Single Column Marquee.

Within the Rectangular Marquee and the Elliptical Marquee lie the ability to select rectangles, squares, ovals, and circles in a variety of ways.

Because they work exactly the same, we’ll explore the Rectangle Marquee Tool – keep in mind that the Elliptical Marquee Tool has the same options and features.

As with all my posts, this one is available for download as a PDF by clicking here. Hope that helps some of you out that would like to return to this guide later or print it out!

Overview: The Marquee Tool Options

When the Marquee Tool is selected, the Options Bar display choices that can be made to affect how the Marquee Tool makes selections.

The Option on the upper left contains Presets for the Tool. There are no default Presets, but if you make some, you will find them here.

Just to the right of the Presets menu, there are four choices for making selections.

Basic Selection

The default setting (the icon on the left) allows for the basic selection. When it is the active choice, a single selection may be created.

If a second selection is made, the first one deselects.

Add To Selection

In order to Add To a current selection, the icon just right of the default setting may be chosen (or the Keyboard Shortcut, the Shift Key, may be used instead).

This choice allows the user to add more selections to the original one.

Subtract From Selection

The next option allows the user to subtract from the original selection.

The Keyboard Shortcut for this choice is the Option (Alt) Key.

Reduce Multiple Selections

The final option reduces multiple selections into just the locations where a new selection intersects the existing ones.

The Keyboard Shortcut for this choice is Option (Alt) Shift.

Feather

Some users like to preset how soft the edge of a new selection will be.

Without Feathering, the edges of selections are sharp – like they were cut out with scissors.

Feathering creates a falloff of pixels in various opacities that make the edge look much softer.

Enter the amount of desired feathering here prior to making the selection. The setting that you choose will remain until you change it.

If you consistently make a lot of selections that require the same edge, this is a good option for you.

If you forget to preset the feathering, don’t worry; you can feather it after the selection has been made by accessing Select / Modify / Feather from the Main Menu Bar.

Within this menu are also options to turn your selection into a border, to smooth the edges, or to expand or contract the selection (make it bigger or smaller).

When you choose Feather, a small window appears in which you can enter the amount of feathering you desire.

This is not a preset; it is a choice that can be made AFTER the selection has been created.

The option to Feather after a selection has been made is popular with artists who use selections in a variety of ways, requiring different amounts of edge softening.

It’s also a good option for those users who tend to forget to look at what the Option Bar’s preset option contains prior to making a selection.

It can be frustrating to make a detailed selection only to find out too late that the pre-feather option is set to 150 pixels, because the last time you used it, you made a vignette!

Style

The Marquee Tools can be set to select in particular proportions using settings from the next option in the Option Bar, Style.

In Normal Style, the Marquee Tool follows the user’s hand, non-constrained to height and width proportion.

When Fixed Ratio is selected, Width and Height fields become active in which numerical information, like 1:2, may be entered.

This choice constrains the selection to a height that’s twice the width. Selecting Fixed Size allows the user to enter width and height restrictions based upon specific numbers of pixels per inch.

There is even a “switch” icon that allows you to reverse the width and height with just a click of a button.

Refine Edge

The last option in the Options Bar is a shortcut to Refine Edge.

Refine Edge presents after selection Feathering – in addition to other options like Smoothing, Contrast, Shifting the Edge one way or the other, and the ability to remove unwanted edge discolorations.

How To Use The Marquee Tool

Now that we’ve explored the Options for the Marquee Tool, it’s time to see how to use it.

Once again, there are options for how you wish to select. The default option, Single Selection, requires a simple press and drag.

In this sample, a rectangular selection was created from top left to bottom right.

When a perfect square selection is needed, the same action, drawn while holding down the Shift Key confines the selection to a perfect square.

A Marquee selection may also be drawn from the center out just by holding down the Option (Alt) Key, positioning the cursor in the center of the object and drawing away and up or down.

Holding down both the Shift Key and the Option (Alt) Keys allow the user to select a perfect square from the center out.

Once the selection has been made, it may be moved into a better position just by pressing inside of the selection and dragging it to a new location.

Use the Arrow Keys on the Keyboard to delicately move the selection pixel by pixel.

If you click outside of the selection, it automatically deselects so you can try again.

If you click outside of the selection by accident, don’t worry, just go to the Main Menu Bar and choose Select / Reselect.

Marquee Selections are commonly used when artists want to choose a part of an image to use for something else, like taking a person from one image to another, or copying one circle to make many.

Here I’ve used the Rectangle Marquee Tool to select the white circle, copied and pasted it to a New Layer Edit / Copy, Edit / Paste (or Layer / New / Layer via copy OR the Keyboard Shortcut Command (Control) j), and then moved the copy into a new position using the Move Tool.

The New Layer with the circle could also have been dragged onto a different image file where it could be used as part of another picture.

The Marquee Tool Box also contains Single Row and Single Column choices.

When View / Rulers is selected in the Main Menu Bar and the Add To Selection is active for the Single Row and Single Column Selection Tools, it’s easy to tap in a quick grid.

In this example, I’ve created a grid and added a New Layer over the Background and Edit / Stroke the selection with Black at 4 pixels in width.

In addition, I added a drop shadow (Layer / Layer Style / Drop Shadow) and applied a gradient to a Layer Mask in order to fade the grid from top left to lower right.

In a smartly created document, separate layers are used for each compositional element.

Notice the layer stack for this image. Each circle is on a separate layer. Each circle has identical layer effects for Layer / Layer Style / Inner bevel and Drop Shadow.

The Layer Style was created on one of the circles, then with the Option (Alt) Key pressed, it was copied to the other circle layers just by dragging and dropping it into place in the Layers Window.

To add extra connectivity between the Drop Shadow and the circles, a New Layer was created under the circle layers and black paint was hand applied just at the lower right edges.

Each of the layers may be adjusted independently or selected together for an all over adjustment.

Here, all of the circle layers plus the layer that contains the hand painted drop shadows are selected, and Edit / Free transform is being used to resize them all at the same time.

To select multiple layers, click on the top layer, hold down the Shift Key, and click on the bottom layer.

When you need to select multiple layers that are not in order, use the Command (Control) key instead.

Just click on the ones you want while holding down the keyboard shortcut.

And in this example, the circle layers were merged with their individual hand painted drop shadows. Each circle was duplicated twice and Edit / Free transform was used to resize them.

The Move Tool was used to reposition the circles. The Background was selected and Edit / Fill was used to drop in a new color.

The grid layer was selected, Lock Transparency was chosen in the Layers Window and Edit / Fill was used to change the color of the grid from black to hot pink.

Closing Thoughts

Selections are a big part of what makes Photoshop such a powerful imaging medium.

Being able to choose specific parts of images to change or introduce elements of new creations opens a universe of creative freedom.

Also, the sophisticated technology for edge modification makes for believable constructed compositions.

When you know how to use all of the options, the Marquee Tools are perfect for both making quick, simple selections and creating complex, accurate graphic shape combinations.

About Selecting and Selection Tools in Adobe Photoshop CS5 > About selecting and selection tools

Note: This excerpt does not include the lesson files. The lesson files are available with purchase of the book.

Making changes to an area within an image in Photoshop is a two-step process. You first select the part of an image you want to change with one of the selection tools. Then, you use another tool, filter, or other feature to make changes, such as moving the selected pixels to another location or applying a filter to the selected area. You can make selections based on size, shape, and color. The selection process limits changes to within the selected area. Other areas are unaffected.

NOTE You’ll learn how to select vector areas using the pen tools in Lesson 8, “Vector Drawing Techniques.”

The best selection tool for a specific area often depends on the characteristics of that area, such as shape or color. There are four types of selections: