Magnetic Lasso

The last option under the lasso tool is the “Magnetic Lasso”.

The “Magnetic Lasso” is an automated method of selection.

I’ll try to explain how it works.

The only thing you need to do is to click it once on the edge of the section you want to select, for example the edge of the roof of this house.

Then move the mouse further over the edge.

Just move, NOT clicking, NOT dragging.

The tool “Magnetic Lasso” will automatically anchors and lines, depending on the color difference of the pixels.

The number of pixels the “Magnetic Lasso” tool will choose will depend on the diameter of brush, which is set in the “Width” in the options bar.

Default setting is set to 10, but if you do not wish to give it as much freedom, you can change it in this box “Width” (1).
AZERTY users better enter this setting before they begin to select, QUERTY users can use the brackets on their keyboard at anytime.

If you want to see the brush, click the “CAPS LOCK” button on your keyboard.

To remove the anchors that are set by the “Magnetic Lasso”, click the “Back” button on your keyboard. Then move your mouse pointer over the line which is arranged by the “Magnetic Lasso”, back to the previous anchor point and go again from there.
To get some help on the anchor points, click in the picture.

Another tip.
When you work with a selection tool, zoom-in as much as possible on the selection area and use the spacebar to temporarily switch to the

“Hand” tool option, which you can use to navigate to a hidden area in your photo.

Tip two.
To switch between the “Magnetic Lasso” tool and “Lasso”, hold the Alt key on your keyboard pressed. Release it when you want to switch to the “Magnetic Lasso”.

If you’ve switched to the “Lasso”, it means that you have to drag and drop, but I think you know that by now.
If you want to switch between the “Magnetic Lasso” and the “Polygonal Lasso” hold the Alt key on your keyboard pressed and click on the next point.

So from “Magnetic Lasso” to “Lasso” = Alt + click and drag.

From “Magnetic Lasso” to “Polygonal Lasso” = Alt + drag.

Quick Selection

The tool “Quick Selection” is one of my favorite tools to work in Photoshop select. It goes fast, otherwise is is not called “quick selection”, and it’s easy, and it’s fun.To work with this tool, select this first in the tool bar (1), click and drag in the photo to the place you want to select (2).

As you drag, the selection is automatically extended on the basis of differences in contrast in the photo.

As with any selection you make, it is advisable wherever possible to zoom in on the selection area. If there are parts in your selection that you do not want to select (6), use the “Subtract from Selection” (3) and click and drag over this part of the selection.

As you notice we are also talking about the three buttons “New Selection”, “Add to Selection” and “Subtract from Selection” (3).

Tip 1:
Select the smallest possible brush tip (4), this makes it easier to work accurately.
The shortcut for this are the square brackets for QWERTY users, for AZERTY users, the ones you have set from the “Hot keys” dialog box (see lesson 13).
Tip 2:
Select “Auto Enhance” (5), this makes the edges of the selection smoother.

Tip 3:
First tell the tool “Quick Selection”, what not to select.

This is done by first using the “Quick Selection” tool somewhere in the area that it should select, then hold the Alt key on your keyboard while you click and drag to select around the area. Once finish the selection, release the Alt key and select the area by clicking and dragging.

You’ll now see that Photoshop is not so fast in selecting “outside the box”.

Of course you should take this with a grain of salt, when you select something far beyond the selection, you are asking Photoshop to do the selection.

If you have finished your selection, you can drag into another image.  But more on that later.

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