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Making selections with the Magic Wand tool

The Magic Wand tool is probably the most popular selection tool used to make the most common selections in photos. I often use the Magic Wand to select areas of an image that are similar in color if I want to make color or tonal changes to only the selected areas.

The typical process for making — and then adjusting — a selection looks like this:

1.  Create a new layer by choosing LayerODuplicate Layer.

2.  Select part of the image you want to modify using the Magic Wand tool.

I use the Magic Wand tool to select backgrounds in images that I want to change. I can lighten or darken the background, replace the background with parts from another image, or blur the background. Whichever adjustment I want to use, I have to separate the subject from the back­ground before I make my edits.

The Magic Wand tool works best when the area you’re selecting is one color (or close to one color) and has distinct boundaries from the remaining area.

The Magic Wand tool works just as well as a way to select the subject of an image instead of the background. Select the background and then choose SelectOInverse to swap the selections for the rest of the image.

The amount of feathering deter­mines how sharp or smooth the edges of the selection are. For the image in Figure 11-28, I applied a Feather radius of 2 pixels by choosing SelectOFeather (Ctrl+Alt+D or 86+Option+D on the Mac) and then typing 2 In the Feather Radius field in the Feather Selection window.

3.  Apply corrections to the image.

For the landscape in Figure 11-28, I adjusted the color and tone of the grass without adjust­ing color and tone for the rest of the image. The image was shot with direct sunlight, which “washed out” some of the color of the grass area. I

Chose ImageOAdjustmentsO

Hue/Saturation and then turned Figure 11-28: Making selective adjustments. up the saturation of the Yellow and Green channels to get the effect I wanted — without affecting the sky or the old building.

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Putting a twist on the whole concept of selecting just one part of the image, I then wanted to adjust the color of the sky. So I chose SelectOInverse (Shift+Ctrl+I, Shift+86+I on a Mac) to reverse the selection from where it was to the rest of the image. I then chose ImageOAdjustmentsOHue/Saturation and tweaked the Blue channel to get the sky the way I wanted it. Figure 11-29 shows the finished product.

Figure 11-29: Selective adjustment of selected areas can change an image dramatically.

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Using rulers and grids

Photoshop offers the capability to precisely position elements of your images. Rulers, grids, and guides are used to map out your photos, allowing you to make edits in a measured envi­ronment. The combination of these precision tools with the Snap-To feature lets you navigate precisely with your mouse or tablet’s stylus.

You can apply rulers to your image window, pro­viding measurements along the left and top of your image window. Applying grids to an image adds horizontal and vertical lines in your image window to better help you navigate. Guides pro­vide horizontal and vertical lines to your specifi­cation in the image window. Hold down the Alt (Windows)/Option (Mac) key as you’re dragging a guide to switch the guide’s orientation 90 degrees.

I use rulers to help me make precision crops to images when the Crop tool just doesn’t cut it (no pun intended). To bring up rulers in your image window, choose ViewORulers or press Ctrl+R (96+R on the Mac). You can change the actual units of measure on the ruler from inches to cen­timeters (or other units) by right-clicking the ruler (86+clicking the Mac); see the image on the left here for an example.

Using grids in your image window allows you to make more precise edits to your image. Grids Are nonprinting lines you can add to your image by choosing ViewOShowOGrid. The image on the right shows an image window with grids turned on.

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Lasso this!

Seeing the Magic Wand tool at work might make you wonder what other selection tools Photoshop has in its bag of tricks. The three lasso tools are used to create finer selections in your image:

I^ Lasso tool: Used for free-form drawing of selections, such as the one shown in the upper-left image of Figure 11-30. I chose this selection so I could edit out the selected yucky spot on the peach without affecting the rest of the image. (I like my fruit to be perfect — no worms!)

I^ Magnetic Lasso tool: Best used to trace more complex shapes. The Selection marquee (the dotted line surrounding your selection) snaps to the selection like metal to a magnet when you use this tool. If you want to select (for example) the entire orange, the Magnetic Lasso tool (shown in the upper-right image of Figure 11-30) does a more accurate selection than the other Lasso tools.

I^ Polygonal Lasso tool: Used for drawing straight edges of a selection, the Polygonal Lasso tool is great for making selections like the one shown in the bottom image in Figure 11-30, where the areas to select are shapes that have straight lines (such as boxes, rectangles, triangles, or windows).

Figure 11-30: Selecting an area of an image you want to edit separately from the rest of the image.

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You can always get rid of a selection if you want to start over by choosing SelectODeselect or by clicking Ctrl+D (96+D on the Mac) to deselect your selection.

Selection options

When you make selections with any tools, options are available to make your selections more precise. Figure 11-31 shows the Select menu, which provides functionality to help you work with selections.

The most commonly used options in the Select menu include these:

W* All: Use this command to select the entire image. You can also use the shortcut Ctrl+A (86+A on the Mac).

W* Deselect: Choose Deselect to remove the selection outline you have made. When making selections you often have to deselect in order to start over to make the correct selections. You can also use the keyboard short­cut Ctrl+D (86+D on the Mac).

W* Inverse: Sometimes you want to select an area that’s tricky, com­plex, or otherwise just tough to select. If you’re lucky, the rest of the image may be easier to select; if that’s the case, select the easier area — and then choose SelectOInverse. The Inverse command reverses your selection, selecting the previ­ously unselected portion of your image.

Figure 11-31: The Select menu provides additional commands to use when making selections.

W* Feather: Choose this command, and then indicate the number of pixels. A feather of two or three pixels provides a smooth, realistic edge for your selections in many photos. Experiment with setting the feature to different numbers of pixels until you find the right setting for your photo. To feather a selection, choose SelectOFeather or press Ctrl+Alt+D (86+Option+D on the Mac).

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I^ Grow: When you choose the Grow command, you can increase the con­tiguous areas of your selection to include areas that are similar in color. To grow a selection, choose SelectOGrow

I^ Similar: The Similar command increases your selection to all like colors of the current selection, regardless of their place in the image. To expand a noncontiguous selection with similar colors, choose SelectO Similar.

Before you can use the Select commands, you must have actual selections made in your image. And it bears repeating: Make sure you duplicate the back­ground layer before making selections. Selections can be cumbersome, but with practice, you can become more proficient.

JSJABE*

When working with images and making edits in Photoshop, many of the graphic tools you’ll be using are accessed from the Photoshop Toolbox. The Toolbox, shown in Figure 114, includes more than 60 tools to manipulate and edit your photos.

Just as an artist carries an assortment of pencils, brushes, erasers, and a few other tools in an art-supply box, you have the same arsenal at your disposal. The Toolbox includes all the drawing and painting tools the artist can’t do without — plus a few others that a Digital Artist can’t do without (such as the Red Eye Removal tool, the Healing Brush, and the Magic Wand tool).

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M Rectangular Marquee -

L Lasso -

C Crop -

J Healing Brush tool -

S Clone Stamp, Pattern Stamp -

E Eraser, Background Eraser, Magic Eraser -

R Blur, Sharpen, Smudge -

A Path Selection -

P Pen -

N Notes, Audio Annotation-H Hand-Foreground color-D Default Colors (Black & White)-Q Edit in Standard mode-F Standard Screen mode-ImageReady -

Figure 11-4: The Photoshop Toolbox.

-V Move

-W Magic Wand

-K Slice, Slice Select

- B Brush, Pencil, Color Replacement

-H History, Art History

-G Gradient, Paint Bucket

-O Dodge, Burn, Sponge

-T Type Tools

-U Shape Tools

-I Eyedropper, Color Sampler, Measure -Z Zoom

-Swap Foreground/Background colors – Background color

-Q Edit in Quick Mask mode

-F Full Screen mode

-F Full Screen mode with menu bar

Using the Marquee tool

Use the Marquee tool to draw rectan­gles, ellipses, horizontal columns, or vertical columns in an image. Right-clicking the Marquee tool icon in the Toolbox brings up the flyout menu, which includes other Marquee tools (see Figure 11-5).

Using the Marquee tool is a quick way to make edits to the selection, or even to crop part of an image:

Figure 11-5: The Marquee tools give you four ways to draw marquees.

1.  Select the Marquee tool.

2.  Draw a marquee around the image portion you want to crop.

3.  Make edits to the selection.

If you simply want to crop the selection, choose ImageOCrop to crop the image to your selection.

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The Lasso tool

The Lasso tool is essential for making selections within parts of an image — and editing just those areas you’ve selected. The Lasso tool flyout menu, shown in Figure 11-6,

Offers three tools for creating selec­tions: the Lasso tool, the Polygonal _.                               ’ Rl I * i j 4-u i\/i „ 4.- i Figure 11-6: The Lasso tools flyout menu. Lasso tool, and the Magnetic Lasso                                             ‘

Tool. (See the “Lasso this!” section, later in this chapter, for more about the Polygonal Lasso and Magnetic Lasso tools.)

The Lasso tool is commonly used to make selections in an image that can be easily traced; it’s like drawing an outline on tracing paper placed over a pic­ture. Select the Lasso tool, and then — while holding down the left mouse button — trace over the part of the image you want to select.

Snip-sNiPping with the Crop tool

The Crop tool is as simple as an artist’s mat knife: You draw a boundary around the parts of your image in which you want to crop, as shown in Figure 11-7. You can specify the width and height of your crop as well as the resolution you want to make the cropped image.

Complete crop Cancel crop

Crop tool Option bar

Crop selection Crop tool

Figure 11-7: Using the Crop tool.

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Editing with the Healing Brush

Some of the coolest editing tools that Photoshop offers are the Healing Brush tools. The flyout menu shown in Figure 11-8 includes four Healing Brush tools that enable you to correct minor details. Imagine

Eliminating pimples, hair, and dust from all the places you don’t want them. (Digitally, at least.)

Figure 11-8: Healing Brush tools.

W* Spot Healing Brush tool: New in CS2, this tool is easier to use than the Healing Brush tool. Just select the Spot Healing Brush and start painting areas to retouch. Because the tool samples surrounding pixels for you, you don’t have to worry about making a selection.

W* Healing Brush tool: With this tool, you can sample a selection of pixels, and then paint those selected pixels onto other areas. Using this tool is a great way to retouch areas of your images.

W* Patch tool: This works similar to how the Healing Brush tool works. The difference is, with the Patch tool, you’re actually making a selection of an area to use for painting in the selected pixels.

W* Red Eye tool: Also new in CS2, this handy little tool provides a quick way to remove that ghoulish “red eye” from your cherished photos.

Cloning around with the Clone Stamp tool

The Clone Stamp tool is the equiva­lent of a rubber stamp (you know — press a stamp on an ink pad and then on paper), only it’s digital:

You sample part of an image (color,

Texture, whatever) and apply that

Figure 11-9: The Clone and Pattern Stamp tools.

Sample elsewhere in the image. All Brush tips work with the Clone Stamp tool, so it’s a great retouching alternative. One of its special versions, the Pattern Stamp tool, re-creates patterns from the cloned selection and applies to another part of the image. Figure 11-9 shows the Clone Stamp tool’s flyout menu.

Removing pixels with the Eraser tool

The Eraser tool is the digital equivalent of those pink erasers at the ends of pencils. You can erase pixels as you move the cursor over them, changing them in ways specified in the Eraser mode you choose on the Option bar.

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Use the Background Eraser tool to remove the effects of overall image adjustments (see Chapter 10) made to only certain areas or layers of the image. To erase all similar pixels within a layer, use the Magic Eraser tool. Among the tools shown in Figure 11-10 are the Background Eraser and Magic Eraser.

Figure 11-10: The Eraser, Background Eraser, and Magic Eraser tools.

Sharpen or blur with the Blur tool

The Blur tool can be a quick way to edit a too-sharp edge by blurring a portion of your photo, in much the same way you’d use the Sharpen tool to add crispness. If you are editing a portrait and want to get a blurred effect, you can make an overall

Adjustment to the photo using the Gaussian Blur filter — but then use the Sharpen tool selectively to sharpen hair and eyes. Figure 11-11 shows the Blur tool’s flyout menu.

Figure 11-11: The Blur, Sharpen, and Smudge tools.

The Smudge tool warps and pushes pixels in the direction you are dragging the tool, giving you a morphing or Smudge Effect. Like the Liquefy filter, the Smudge tool enables you to hide flaws or achieve some really cool special effects.

DraWIng shapes with the Pen tool

The Pen tool actually does a wee bit more than a pen you use to write love letters, shopping lists, and checks. The Pen tool in Photoshop creates lines, curves, and shapes (also called vector paths) for a variety of editing and drawing purposes. The Pen tool flyout menu (shown in Figure 11-12) shows its different options — includ­ing the Freeform Pen tool and a vari­ety of anchor-point Pen tools.

Figure 11-12: The Pen tools.

Load up an image and experiment with the Pen and Freeform Pen tools. The Pen tools offer a valuable way to create special effects when you want to make complex selections.

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Making selections with the Magic Wand tool

One of the most valuable editing tools in the Toolbox is the Magic Wand. You can use it to make selections — one of the most widely used processes in editing images — for example, to select similarly colored areas in your photo. You can specify the color range and tolerance for a selected area by using the Option bar to set them.

Selections are used to select contigu­ous and discontiguous areas of an image so you can make edits specifi­cally to that area selected. For instance, if you want to select only the clouds in an image of sky, use the Magic Wand tool to select only the white areas (the clouds, which are discontiguous) and not the blue (the sky). I often use the Magic Wand tool to select portions of the backgrounds in my portraits so I can lighten, darken, or even blur those areas to get the effect I want. Another way I use selections is to isolate — and fix — areas of my image that are out of gamut. I want the whole image to match the gamut range of my selected printer and paper combination,

But I don’t want to change the entire image — just the areas that are out of gamut.

Figure 11-13: Using the Magic Wand to select similarly colored areas of an image.

Figure 11-13 shows the Magic Wand tool used to select a section of an image that is overexposed relative to the rest of the image. I selected that portion so I could adjust its brightness to match the rest of the image.

Painting with the Brush tool

The Brush, Pencil, and Color

Replacement tools are commonly

Used to paint changes on your

Photos. Figure 11-14 shows the

Figure 11-14: The Brush, Pencil, and Color Replacement tools.

Brush tool and its flyout menu.

Numerous brush sizes, tips, and modes are available on the Option bar, as

Shown in Figure 11-15. They’re useful with many Photoshop image-editing

Techniques.

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Figure 11-15: Modes available for use with the Brush tools.

Dodging and burning using Dodge and Burn tools

One of the most common edits that discerning digital photographers make in Photoshop is Dodging and burning. Back in the day when photographers like me developed photos using enlargers and chemi­cals, I had a few tricks up my sleeve

To touch up my work. Dodging and burning allowed me to darken or lighten certain areas of a print to my liking by either reducing or increas -

Figure 11-16: The Dodge, Burn, and Sponge tools.

Ing exposure to certain parts of the print. Photoshop lets old-timers like me do those same things with the Dodge and Burn tools shown in Figure 11-16.

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The Sponge tool is useful when you want to make slight color-saturation adjustments to an area. For example, you can decrease the color saturation of a certain area where the red may be too bright or “blown out,” giving an unnatural look to the photo. The Sponge tool can also come in handy to help bring out-of-gamut areas of your image back into a color range that your printer can handle.

Writing text with the Type tools

Used most often by graphic design­ers who combine both text and images in their everyday work, the Horizontal and Vertical Text tools, shown in Figure 11-17, are methods to insert text into an image. Add text

To your photos in just three steps:

Figure 11-17: Type tools let you add text to an image.

1.  Click the Horizontal Type tool

In the Toolbox.

2.  Choose the font you want to use.

New in CS2 is the ability to view WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) samples of each font by clicking the Font menu located on the Option bar, as shown in 11-18.

Figure 11-18: Choosing a font and font size on the Option bar.

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3. Click your image and type the text.

For my photography Web site, Http://kevinmoss photography. com, I always type a description, name, or location for each photo on my site. I use the Text tool to easily add the text to my image canvas. After you type some text, you can move it around with the Move tool and place it exactly where you want it, as shown in Figure 11-19.

Shaping thinGS up with the Shape tooLS

For situations when you want to draw simple shapes (or insert predefined shapes into your photos or canvas), the Photoshop Toolbox offers Shape tools to do just that. Figure 11-20 shows all the Shape tools available in the Rectangle tool flyout menu.

Figure 11-19: Type and move your text to the desired location on your canvas.

Suppose I want to insert a copyright symbol next to my text for the Orchid art poster example I used in the previous section. The process for adding this symbol is as follows:

1.  Right-click (single-click on the Mac) the Rectangle tool and choose the Custom Shape tool.

2.  Choose the copyright symbol from the Option bar Shape selection menu shown in Figure 11-21.

3.  Drag the Custom Shape tool over the part of your image where you want to insert the symbol, as shown in Figure 11-22.

Figure 11-20: Shape tools available in the Photoshop Toolbox.

Figure 11-21: Selecting a shape to insert onto the canvas.

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FS 2005, Kevin L. Moss

Figure 11-22: Adding a copyright symbol to the canvas.

Zooming in and out

The Zoom tool provides one of many ways to enlarge or shrink your view of the details in an image: Click the Zoom tool, place your cursor over your image, and click. You can also right-click (Option+click on a Mac) with your mouse and choose Zoom Out to reverse your zoom, as shown in Figure 11-23.

Other methods for zooming in and out of an image include using the Navigator palette or pressing Ctrl+/-. On a Mac, the preferred method for zoom­ing in is to press Spacebar+86+Click; to zoom out, press Spacebar+86+Option+Click.

Using tool presets

Figure 11-23: Right-click in the image to view the Zoom tool’s options.

One timesaving feature of Photoshop is that you can set up tools the way you like them. You work with these every day, so it’s nice to have some of

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Them set up with your own cus­tomized settings and shortcuts. When you save settings for com­monly used tools in Photoshop, you create Tool presets.

I prepare a lot of photos for print and for the Web. One set of presets I use on a regular basis is my crop settings — for both my Web site and for printing. I create crop presets including 11×14 inches at 360dpi for prints and 4×5 inches at 72dpi for the Web. Then I save these crop settings as presets so I don’t have to go in and manually specify a crop setting every time I want to crop an image.

Other common presets to consider

Are for Brush sizes, frequently used

Fonts, and font sizes. As you become more familiar with Photoshop and

Figure 11-24: The Tool Presets palette and flyout menu.

Really nail down your everyday image-editing workflow, try setting up your common tools using the Tool Presets palette shown in Figure 11-24.

The Tool Presets palette offers some useful features for creating presets:

I^ You can drag the Tool Presets palette from the Palette well to your image window.

I^ If you need to view all presets instead of the presets for the tool selected, uncheck the Current Tool Only check box. Re-check Current Tool Only to view only the presets for the selected tool.

I^ You can organize presets by tool type, delete presets, or change the way presets are dis­played. To do so, use the Preset Manager located in the Tool Presets flyout menu.

To set up a tool preset, follow these steps:

1. Click the tool in the Toolbox that you want to create a preset for.

In Figure 11-25, I’m selecting the Crop tool.

Figure 11-25: Select the Crop tool.

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2. Make the settings to the tool that you want to preset.

For the Crop tool preset, I created a crop size of 19×13 inches at 360dpi in the Crop tool options on the Option bar, as shown in Figure 11-26.

Figure 11-26: Making a preset for Crop settings.

3.  Click the Tool Presets palette in the Palette well, and click to save the tool settings

Made in Step 2 as shown in

Figure 11-27.                                        Figure 11-27: Naming and saving the preset.

You can also access the tool

Presets by clicking the tool button on the far-left of the Option bar or by choosing WindowOTool.

4.  Type a name for the tool that you’re saving.

Photoshop creates a default name for your preset that you can cus­tomize to your liking.

As you can see, there are a number of ways to open the Tool Presets palette and create tool presets that can save you editing time.

Typically an effective image-editing workflow is put together

Much like the overall-correction workflow I describe in Chapter 10. Here, too, I encourage you to make your image edits in a step-by-step

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Sequence of best practices. Unlike the procedure for overall color and tonal corrections, however, you do have the freedom to mix up the order of your edits a bit. But I still like consistency, so I take these edits in individual steps:

1. Plan your edits.

After you complete overall corrections, evaluate your image to deter­mine what type of edits if any are needed. Common types of edits to plan for include these:

A.  Dodging and burning.

Dodging is a technique you use to lighten a certain area of an image; burning darkens a certain area of an image. Whether you’re working on landscape, still life, portraits, or photos of your pets, evaluate your images to see if areas need to be dodged (like when you want your dogs eye’s to be more bright), or burned (like when you need to darken areas of a landscape).

Dodging and burning areas of an image can rescue out-of-gamut parts of an image and bring them back into a printable range. (For more about out-of-gamut colors, see Chapter 10.)

B.  Removing spots.

Dust spots on digital images aren’t really possible for images taken with compact digital cameras because the lens is built into the camera. But when you’re shooting with digital SLRs, dust spots can happen when particles find their way onto your image sensor. It’s happened to me, and is fairly common for digital SLR shooters.

On a recent trip to England, I had the opportunity to stop off at this one interesting spot to take photos of some big stones sticking out of the ground. I slapped a circular polarizer on my lens to get some darker blue skies and to reduce the glare off the stones. To my later dismay, I discovered (while zooming in on those photos in Photoshop) spots in the sky caused by water spots on my circular polarizer. I called up the trusty Healing Brush tool and used it to remove those spots, as shown in Figure 11-1.

C.  Retouching.

Nature is not always kind. Time and again, the people whose por­traits I take want to make sure I get rid of the wrinkles, pimples, and blemishes we all seem to have. No problem: When editing images in Photoshop, you can soften skin using the Blur tool or one of the blur filters. You can use the Dodge tool or Paintbrush to help whiten teeth and eyes. (If you get good at retouching por­traits, you can save your friends and clients some money: They won’t have to go to a plastic surgeon for a facelift or the dentist to get teeth whitened — provided they never venture out.)

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Spots

Original image Figure 11-1: Removing spots with the Healing Brush tool.

Spots removed

If you’re shooting portraits, retouching in Photoshop is an impor­tant phase of your work. Plan your edits carefully.

D. Sharpening.

To make a general statement, all digital images need some sharpen­ing. Sharpening should be the last step you take before printing a photo or posting it to the Web. I show you more about sharpen­ing in the next chapter, but I’m mentioning it here because sharp­ening is considered an image edit.

Figure 11-2 shows a zoomed portion of the photo of those stones in the ground before — and after — sharpening with the Unsharp Mask filter. (I didn’t see any Druid sacrifices there that day, but I did have to sacrifice my lunch hour so I could take the time to shoot some photos.)

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Not sharpened                       Sharpened with Unsharp Mask

Figure 11-2: Applying the Unsharp Mask for sharpening photos.

2. Create separate layers for each edit.

After you evaluate an image, and then decide (say) to dodge it, then burn it, and then make the cigarette butts disappear from its floor, do each of those edits in its own layer. That way you can delete layers whose edits just didn’t do the job, without affecting other image-editing layers.

Here’s the fast way to create an editing layer:

A.  Create a new layer.

Press Ctrl+Shift+Alt+E or 96+Shift+Option+E on a Mac to merge a copy of all visible layers into a new target layer. (Run out of fingers yet?)

By combining all the previous layers into the new layer, you’re essentially merging all the adjustment layers and other edits you’ve made so far. Press Ctrl+Shift+Alt+E (96+Shift+Option+E on a Mac) to combine the previous layers into your new editing layer.

B.  Give the layer a proper name.

For example, if you’re creating a new layer to use the Healing Brush to remove spots on your image, give the layer a descriptive name (such as “Healing Brush Edits”). After you create the layer, double-click the layer name in the Layers palette, and type in a new name like the example shown in Figure 11-3.

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If you use the Merge Visible command (LayersOMerge Visible), you wind up Flat­tening All the visible layers into one layer. That’s not a good idea if you want to preserve all your changes in separate layers. Instead of using the Merge Visible command, press Shift+ Ctrl+Alt+E (Shift+86+ Option+E on a Mac) to retain all the previous layers but to merge those layers into the one you just created. Now You’re ready to make an edit!

After you’ve created your first editing layer and combined all the visible layers into that layer, you can simply duplicate the new layer for whatever new edit you want to perform next.

3. Edit your image.

Now that you have a fresh newly “merged” layer to work on, go ahead and remove a blemish, whiten some teeth, and dodge

Type new layer name Double-click layer name

$»NG/

Create new layer

Figure 11-3: Typing a new layer name. Keep each edit to its own layer.

If you start by removing a blemish and then decide you want to dodge or burn some other part of the image, create a new layer first (by choosing LayerODuplicate Layer).

S