Selection Tools

In photo-editing, you would find that some particular part of the picture you have choosen need to be corrected. In order to do this, you have to use selection tools to easily edit the part you want without corrupting the picture. Let me introduce the selection tools available in Photoshop:

1. Marquee tools

These selection tool is used to pick out the part you want with the shape given. For example, if you choose the rectangular marquee tool, it will create a rectangular shape marquee when you drag it and the area within the rectangular shape will be affected when you start editing the part.

2. Lasso tools

These tools is much more useful than the marquee tools when you want to select a part with a very complicated shape or area.

3. Magic wand tool
A very handy tool for quick editing. It will immediately select an area based on the colour in the picture.

The following pictures show how each selection tools works.

With rectangular marquee tool.


With elliptical marquee tool.


With single row marquee tool.


With single column marquee tool.

For the marquee tools, all you have to do is click and drag the marquee along the part that you want to work on.


With normal lasso tool. This tool is best used with a tablet rather than a mouse.


With polygonal lasso tool. For mouse users, this is the best tool to use. However, note that this tool is hard to use when making curve selections.


With magnetic lasso tool.


With magic wand selection tool. Be careful when using this tool because it will automatically select an area once you click on it.

This is what I've learned on selection tools. Next post will be about photo retouching. Until next time!