The Magic Wand Tools in Photoshop. A.K.A SELECTIONS

In this 2 part video, Rick Navarro goes over the selection tools in Photoshop CC which include all of the magic wand tools.

A selection isolates one or more parts of your image. By selecting specific areas, you can edit and apply effects and filters to portions of your image while leaving the unselected areas untouched.

The easiest way to select pixels in your image is to use Select Subject or one of the quick selection tools. But you can also select areas of a certain shape with the marquee tools or the lasso tools to make a selection by tracing an element in your image. These are known as edge based selections.

However it’s also possible to make selections based on a range of colors in an image. There are commands in the menu sets to select, deselect, or reselect all pixels based on color but you can also use the magic wand tool to make what is known as color-based selections .

In addition to pixels, vector data can be used to make selections. Use the pen or shape tools to produce precise outlines called paths. Paths can be converted to selections.

Selections can be copied, moved, and pasted, or saved and stored in an alpha channel. Alpha channels store selections as grayscale images called masks. A mask is like the inverse of a selection: it covers the unselected part of the image and protects it from any editing or manipulations you apply.

You can convert a stored mask back into a selection by loading the alpha channel into an image.

Check out the detailed video series below and let us know if you have any questions.