Photoshop, The Third Lesson
The third chapter in the Photoshop lessons was all about working with selections. There are many different tools available for making selections within an image.
The Tools
- Quick Selection Tool
- Marquee Tool
- Magic Wand Tool
- Lasso Tool
About the Tools
The Quick Selection Tool is one of the easiest selection tools in Photoshop. This tool automatically selects the edges of an object within an image using its content-aware software. As quick and easy as this tool is to use, it does have its faults when it comes to accuracy of the true edges of an object. The second tool Photoshop has for selection is called the Marquee Tool. There are two different versions of this tool, an Elliptical Marquee Tool, and the Rectangular Marquee Tool. Both of these are for selection objects with true shapes. The elliptical version is meant for objects with rounded, circular edges, and the rectangular version is meant for square objects. The next tool we learned about was the Magic Wand Tool. To use this tool, you have to select a color within an image. After that, the Magic Wand Tool will select all pixels within the image that are that color, or within the color tolerance range you selected. This tool is especially helpful for removing white or solid color backgrounds from an image. After learning about the Magic Wand Tool, we moved on to the Lasso Tools. There were two versions of the Lasso Tool that we learned about this chapter, which were the Polygonal Lasso Tool and the Magnetic Lasso Tool. The Polygonal Lasso Tool requires you to choose anchor points with an image, and a selection border will automatically appear between each point. The Magnetic Lasso Tool is for freehand selections, and a selection border will automatically snap to the edges of an object that contrasts with its background.
Personally, my favorite selection tool is the Magic Wand Tool. I have always struggled trying to choose images for different projects because I wanted them to have no background. I have found that a square, white background around my images in a presentation look tacky and unrefined. This tool is one that I will hopefully use a lot in the future to remove the white backgrounds from images that I plan to use in presentations.
My Project
For my chapter three independent project, I made a collage of different objects that are important to me. Most of these objects represent some of my favorite hobbies and activities (ie; volleyball, travelling, reading, writing, etc). The border image was supplied to us, and I used the Rectangular Marquee Tool to delete the white spaces within the border. For the majority of my objects within the image I used the Magic Wand Tool to delete the white space around the image. The image of a volleyball player, however, didn’t have a white background originally. To select her I used the Polygonal Lasso Tool. Originally I tried to use the Magnetic Lasso Tool, but there wasn’t enough contrast between the player and the background to get the selection quite right.
