![magic wand tool magic wand tool](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/_76qrsNB8kA/maxresdefault.jpg)
![magic wand tool magic wand tool](https://shapeshed.com/images/articles/wand_first_selection.jpg)
The threshold is a very important parameter of this tool. It will highlight with a magenta color like this.Īnd once you release it, click it to make your selection around the chosen area. If you want to see the selection area before clicking on that area, then enable the Draw mask option.Īnd just make a click on your desired area and hold the click to see the selection area. You can make multiple clicks for this purpose. Just make a click on the unwanted selection. This helps in the removal of that selection which is unwanted for you. Next is Subtract from the current selection. We use this mode generally for the selection process. So it will continue adding each new selection with the previous selection. Here you will find new selection adds with the previous one. Now again, select an area on a flower like this.Īnd make another click for making a selection. The next mode is to Add to the current selection. So with this option for each new selection previous selection will delete automatically. Now click on another area, and you will notice the previous selection will delete itself.
![magic wand tool magic wand tool](https://www.kapwing.com/resources/content/images/2020/05/Magic-Wand-Tool-Online.png)
I will click on the petal of these flowers and have this selection. We have four modes in the selection, and the first one is to replace the current selection.Įnable this option and make click on the desired area of your image. Note how more of the sky has now been selected.Now let us understand every important parameter of this tool which are present in the parameters box. Note that the Grow command will be based on the Tolerance value currently set in the Options bar for the magic wand tool.Ĥ This shows a view of the image after applying the Select Grow command. you will notice how the magic wand now selecteded blue sky areas in other parts of the image as well.ģ Once most of the desired blue pixels had been selected I used the Select Grow command to expand the magic wand selection. In other words, it only selected the pixels that were connected to each other.Ģ I then deselected the Contiguous option in the Options bar, the magic wand tool wasnow able to select blue pixels of similar tonal value that occured everywhere in the image. Because the Contiguous option was switched on, the selection was limited to selecting neighboring pixels only. In this example I clicked in the blue sky area to select all the blue pixels surrounding the point where I clicked. If the pixels clicked on have a mean value of 120 and the tolerance setting is set at the default of 32, Photoshop will select pixels with a mean color value between 88 and 152.ġ The magic wand tool can be used to create a selection of pixels which are similar in color to the point where you clicked. When you click on an area in the image, Photoshop selects all the adjacent pixels whose numeric color values are within the specified tolerance either side of the pixel value. The Tolerance setting governs the sensitivity of the magic wand selection. You can adjust the magic wand tolerance setting so that it can select fewer or more pixels, based on how similar they are in color to the pixel you click on. Figure 1 below shows the magic wand tool Options bar.įigure 1 The magic wand tool Options bar. There are better ways of going about doing this, and these are explained in Chapter 8 of the book.
Magic wand tool professional#
In short, don’t dismiss the wand completely but don’t place too much faith either in its capabilities for professional masking tool. I rarely ever use the magic wand when defining critical outlines, but I do find it quite useful when I want to make a rough selection area that's based on color. Color Range provides all the power of the magic wand tool, but offers much more control. If you are going to create complex selections this way then really you are often better off using the quick selection tool or choose the Select Color Range option, which can also be used to create selections based on color values. However, you can use the smoothing options in the Select menu to tidy up a magic wand selection. I find the magic wand tool works OK on low resolution images but that is about the limit of its usefulness. That’s what most people expect the magic wand tool to do but in reality it does not always perform that reliable a job. For example, if you have a picture of a landscape with a blue sky and click in the sky area with the magic wand tool, it should just select the sky. The magic wand tool can be used to select pixels on the basis of their luminosity values within the individual color channels that make up the composite image.