From the course: Photoshop CC 2017 One-on-One: Fundamentals

Working with the Magic Wand tool - Photoshop Tutorial

From the course: Photoshop CC 2017 One-on-One: Fundamentals

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Working with the Magic Wand tool

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- [Male Narrator] Alright, now it's time to add the clouds to our composition and we're going to be selecting these clouds using the magic wand tool. So I'll go ahead and switch over to yet another image from the Fotolia image library. Because it's so wide, I'm going to press Shift + Tab to hide my right side panels, and then I'm going to zoom in so that I can see a couple of regions of sky around the central clouds, and I want to be able to see the upper left corner of the image as well. Now, notice that the magic wand tool shares a flyup menu with the quick selection tool. Both tools automate the selection process and, perhaps as a result, many folks struggle with deciding which tool to use when. You'll even hear some experts claim that the main difference is one of quality. In other words, the quick selection tool may not be the best tool on the planet, but it's better than the tragic wand. But in fact, that's just plain nonsense. They are ultimately very different tools. So, here's how it works. The quick selection tool seeks out edges, that is, areas of rapid luminance transition and paints up to those edges. So, if I were to paint in the sky, for example, it's very possible at some point, that one or more of the clouds is not going to be red as an edge, and in my case, I ended up selecting this cloud, and this one as well. Which is obviously not what I want. By contrast, the magic wand tool selects areas of common luminance or shared color, and so what we're going to do, is select an area of shared color, the sky, and then reverse the selection to get the clouds. Also notice that the tools share a common keyboard shortcut, of w for wand, which means you can switch back and forth between the tools, by pressing Shift + w like so. Alright, I'm going to deselect this image by pressing Ctrl + d, or cmd + d on the Mac, and then I will click in this region of sky. And notice, that Photoshop has selected up to those clouds up on the left hand side, and the right, but the selection just dies here in the middle of the sky. And that's a function of this tolerance value, up here in the options bar. Tolerance is measured in luminance levels, and as you may recall, those go from zero for black, to 255 for white. So, with the default tolerance of 32, Photoshop is selecting 32 luminance levels darker and 32 luminance levels lighter than the click point, averaged on a channel by channel basis. And so that took the selection all the way to the clouds, but right here, the tolerance value just petered out. Now, one way to solve this problem is to change the tolerance value. So I could take it up to, let's say, 54, just for the sake of demonstration. Notice, when I press the enter key, or the return key on a Mac, that change is not applied to the existing selection outline, it affects the next one you create. And so I'll go ahead and press Ctrl + d, or cmd + d on a Mac, to once again deselect the image, and then I'll click on roughly that same point again, and you can see that I now have a larger selection. I also want to draw your attention to a couple of check boxes up here. Anti-alias, when it's turned on, will work to slightly smooth out the edges of the selection outline. But, for our purposes, we just want it to be left on. Continuous determines whether the wand selects adjacent, or non-adjacent pixels, so when it's turned on, we select just this region of sky, and then the selection ends at the clouds. But if I were to turn this checkbox off, and then press Ctrl + d, or cmd + d on a mac, to deselect the image, and once again click at this point right here, then you can see that I am jumping across the clouds in order to select non-adjacent sky. Alright, now let's say you want to further extend the selection. In that case, you would press the Shift key. And notice, at that point, you get a plus sign next to your cursor. You can Shift click outside the selection if you want, but oftentimes it's helpful to Shift click inside the selection, like so, in order to just incrementally extend that selection so you don't end up going too far as I have here. If you do go too far, just press Ctrl + z, or cmd + z on a Mac to undo that last click. And set the tolerance value to something more reasonable, such as, I'll try out 24. And there's nothing magical about these values, I'm just experimenting. At which point I'll go ahead and Shift click down in this region of sky, in order to continue to extend my selection. And now, I'm going to Spacebar drag over to the right hand side, and see what I've got. It looks like I've have quite enough of the sky selected, but I'm going too far into the clouds, and so I'm going to reduce my tolerance value to, let's say, 12 this time around, and I'm going to turn on the continuous checkbox so that I'm just deselecting adjacent pixels, is what I'm about to do, and you deselect by pressing the Alt key, or the option key on a Mac. At which point, you'll see a minus sign next to the cursor. And now, I'm just going to go ahead and Alt, or option click inside the clouds in order to deselect them, bearing in mind that we are going to ultimately reverse this selection in order to select the clouds and deselect the sky, and I'm just continuing to Alt or option click inside these clouds like so. Now, it's not essential that you get it exactly right. You want to do better than I just did, but still, I'll go ahead and press Ctrl + z, or cmd + z on a Mac to undo that change, and I will Alt click inside the cloud like so, and so what we're trying to do, is just define a general selection around these clouds. We are going to be dramatically refining this selection to make it that much better in a future movie. But if you can just manage to, more or less, select what I've done right here, and just to give you a sense of what that means, I'll press Ctrl + zero, or cmd + zero on a Mac, to fit the image on screen. And if you feel like finessing things a little more, for example, I want to see if I can select this little cloud right there, I'll go ahead and Alt or option click on it, and I'll Alt or option click in this little mess of clouds right there as well in order to deselect them, and Alt or option click right about there. Obviously, your results are going to vary, but once you get to a point that looks more or less pretty good, like you generally have the sky selected, then go up to the select menu, and choose the Inverse command to deselect the sky, and select the clouds instead. And that's how you use the magic wand tool, which is actually much better than most people think, in order to select an area of shared color, specifically, this gradient sky, here inside Photoshop.

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