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Using the Magic Wand to Make Object Selections

Lesson 15 from: Hidden Photoshop Tips & Tricks

Jesús Ramirez

Using the Magic Wand to Make Object Selections

Lesson 15 from: Hidden Photoshop Tips & Tricks

Jesús Ramirez

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Lesson Info

15. Using the Magic Wand to Make Object Selections

Lesson Info

Using the Magic Wand to Make Object Selections

Now we have this ugly tractor, and the reason I like showing this example is because we all think of the really fancy tools that photo shop has to make selections. But we often forget about the simple tools that were there for many, many, many years. And some things we overcomplicate things. For example, if you were to look at a tractor like this and you were trying to mask it out, if you're an advanced user, you might start thinking, Oh, well, maybe I can use a channel and make a selection out of a channel. Or maybe I could use a quick selection tool and do all these kinds of crazy selections with Check Lee. It's not that bad. It goes fairly quickly, but they're sexually quicker ways of doing it. What do you have to do is analyze the image and think of what? What's the problem? First of all, and second of all, what's the best way of solving my problem? So in this case, we have ah, and the background. This is, Ah, an image that I downloaded for a composite I downloaded from Adobe stock...

, whoever the artists who originally created this image made sure that the background was completely white. One of the oldest tourism Photoshopped to make selections is the tool that you probably bone use anymore. I rarely use it, except in a problem like this, which is the Magic Wandell and the Magic. One tool could be very useful for something that has a solid color. And this is what I want. I want to get rid of the solid color. I can just click anywhere in the white and is gonna make a selection around all the white pixels. Now I want all the white pixels in the image, not just the ones that are touching each other so I can uncheck, contiguous and click again. And now that's gonna make a selection around all the white pixels in the image I can then click on the layer Mask icon, and that's going to do the opposite. I wanted to keep the tractor, not, um, not the background. I can solve that simply by clicking Invert on the Properties panel, and that already made a really good selection for my for my composite. Now you can, of course, refined the selection by clicking on selected mask or holding the shift key of your prefer the older version of adjusting layer master selections and maybe contracted a little bit. Smooth it feather it impress. OK, But as you saw, we, uh, made a simple select. We made a somewhat complicated selection really simple just by analysing the image and thinking of what tool works best for that particular job. So even though I rarely used the Magic One tour, this is one instance and where I still use it, cause I know it gives me good results fairly quickly.

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Ratings and Reviews

Lael
 

Overall Photoshop Week 2017 has some amazing instructors for workflow & compositing. Jesus Ramirez has the unique ability to combine simplicity with really useful depth: blend modes, different approaches to selection or combining different tools. This course covers a lot of tools and there are a number of ‘wow! didn't know that!’ moments a more advanced user will love.

Amy Vaughn
 

Yeah yeah, Jesus Ramirez is a great instructor and this class is packed with useful tips and even some fun ones that might not be so useful. But it was that one about using two windows from the same document that changed my Photoshop life.

Elad
 

Jesus is excellent! full of knowledge and provides a lot of helpful tips in a clear and easy to understand way. Only thing missing are captions for this class, for some reason. Otherwise, I wish there were more classes like this one.

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