Photoshop Magic wand Tool: Make a Selection by Color-Range

The Magic Wand tool lets you select a area by color range without having to trace its outline. You can specify the color range, or tolerance, for the Magic Wand tool’s selection at tool’s option bar. Enter a low value to select the few colors very similar to the pixel you click, or enter a higher value to select a broader range of colors. To use Magic Wand tool, in the image, click the color you want to select.

Note: You cannot use the Magic Wand tool on an image in Bitmap mode.

Magic Wand Tool Short Cuts

If you already have selection in your picture you can use following key to perform Add, Subtract or Intersect. Press and hold the key and click on color you want to select.

• Shift+Click: To add area to current selection.
• Alt+Click: To remove area form current selection.
• Alt+Shift+Click: To select only overlap(intersected) area of your current selection with new selection area.

Note: You may notice that when you hold down key your cursor will change, form default , depend on each operation. Add , Subtract , Intersect . And also selection mode button in tool option bar will temporary switch to each mode depend on key pressing.

Magic Wand Tool Options

Selection Mode (A): You can use the marquee tools to add to or subtract from existing pixel selections.

Note: Before manually adding to or subtracting from a selection, set the feather(b) and anti-aliased(c) values in the options bar to the same settings used for the original selection.

• Normal: Create New Selection. Your Current selection will be replace.
• Add: Add new selection area to current selection.
  
  
  
• Subtract: Remove new selection area to current selection.
  
  
  
• Intersected: Result in overlap area of your current selection and your new selection area.
  
  
  

Tolerance (B): Control range of color to be select. enter a value in pixels, ranging from 0 to 255. Enter a low value to select the few colors very similar to the pixel you click, or enter a higher value to select a broader range of colors.

Anti-Aliased(C): Smooth the jagged edges of a selection by softening the color transition between edge pixels and background pixels. Since only the edge pixels change, no detail is lost. Anti-aliasing is useful when cutting, copying, and pasting selections to create composite images. Turning off this option produces a hard-edged transition between pixels–and therefore the appearance of jagged edges.

Contiguous (D): To select only areas using the same colors connected. If unchecked all pixels in the image using the same colors will be selected.

Use All Layers (E): To select colors using data from all the visible layers. If unchecked the Magic Wand tool selects colors from the active layer only.

Related Article:

• Using Photoshop Tool Preset
• Using Photoshop Selection Feather
• Define Selection Edge
• Photoshop Quick Selection Tool
• Photoshop Marquee Tool
• Photoshop Lasso Tool
• Photoshop CS3 Toolbox: Quick Reference

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