Testing the Magic Wand and Quick Selection Tools
Lesson 15 from: Photoshop for Beginners: Essential TrainingMark Wallace
Testing the Magic Wand and Quick Selection Tools
Lesson 15 from: Photoshop for Beginners: Essential TrainingMark Wallace
Lesson Info
15. Testing the Magic Wand and Quick Selection Tools
Lessons
Class Introduction
00:52 2Introducing Photoshop
02:37 3The Class Materials
01:36 4How To Open Files
01:42 5Using The Home Screen
02:35 6Exploring The Interface
03:30 7Getting Additional Help
01:36 8Understanding Workspaces
05:11Tools and The Options Bar
03:50 10Why You Should Use a Tablet
04:31 11Finding Hidden Tools
04:23 12How to See What You’re Working On
08:12 13Selecting Things
08:01 14More Selection Tools
12:25 15Testing the Magic Wand and Quick Selection Tools
07:25 16The History Palette – Undoing Things
05:24 17Resolution and Bit Depth
07:03 18Photoshop Preferences
01:31 19Menu and Item Shortcut Keys
02:39 20Non-Destructive Editing
02:57 21Working with Layers
12:19 22Groovy 3 Exercise
11:43 23Layer Effects and Styles
05:38 24Layer Masks – Karen on Beans
08:33 25Using Adjustment Layers
05:38 26Martian Karen
03:37 27Advanced Compositing Using Layers
08:43 28Non-Destructive Editing Techniques
05:22 29Understanding Smart Objects
07:28 30Smart Sharpen
06:42 31Understanding Histogram
06:24 32Adjusting Curves
03:48 33The Healing Brush Tools
10:26 34The Clone Stamp Tool
07:47 35The Burn and Dodge Tools
05:55 36Understanding RAW Files
01:44 37Adobe Camera Raw
04:18 38XMP Sidecar Files
02:14 39Camera Raw: Edit
12:24 40Camera Raw: Crop & Rotate
03:13 41Camera Raw: Spot Removal
04:56 42Camera Raw: Adjustment Brush
08:17 43Camera Raw: Graduated Filter
05:40 44Camera Raw: Radial Filter
05:11 45Camera Raw: Red-Eye Removal
02:04 46Camera Raw: Snapshots and Presets
09:39 47Neural Filters
10:09 48Portrait Retouching Session
36:53 49Scenic Retouching Session
11:25Lesson Info
Testing the Magic Wand and Quick Selection Tools
now that we know how to select some things. Let's do some comparisons. I'm gonna open to different images. We're going to try different tools to see which ones work better than others. And then we're gonna do something ridiculous to show you why you would select something. I'm going to put a model named Karen on some beans and so let's dive right in. I have opened wanna dot jpeg the same image that we've been working on this entire time. It's loaded up. One thing that we need to remember to do though is to go over to this background layer and click on the lock. We're gonna get to why that is in a future session, but make sure you do that and then what we want to do is go to file open and then we're gonna go over here and we're going to open uh Karen dot psD that's that right there, I'll click open and now we have a new image now notice in Photoshop here, we have two different tabs so we can have two items open at the same time and we can go back and forth between those two things to en...
d this Karen file here. I'm going to double click on the hand so that we can see her filling the screen. Okay, let's compare those selection tools and see why one will work better in some situations and some and others. So remember in wana when we had, we went over here and we had the magic wand tool, it had really significant issues because the background and wanda's hair are very similar in color and tone and so Photoshop wasn't really able to figure out where I wanna started and where the background started. So that wasn't very good but we had great success when we used the object selection tool and we just said, hey select the subject and so that new tool did a great job. But sometimes those old school tools were great. So over here in our Karen image, you'll notice that there is a huge amount of contrast between Karen and the background. The background is white. Karen is very dark hair and her outfit is very dark. So if we went over here and chose the magic wand tool three x 3 average our tolerances 35 contiguous and I hit the background bam, just like that, the background is selected. Okay, so clearly some of these tools work better in some images than others. We can even go in and try this tool that didn't work the quick selection tool and if I drag this around, Karen notice that as I'm dragging, it works just fine. It selects the background, it's great. So I want what I want you to do after this session is open both of these images and try these tools, all these different selection tools and try selecting these two different models and see which method works the best. Try the quick selection tools, try the magic wand tools, try the lasso tool, try the different options in the options bar, get to know these selection tools because we're gonna be using them quite a bit. So let me show you one more thing before we do the crazy Carolan beings. Which is really going to be fun. And that is there's another thing that we need to do when we're selecting items. And that is selecting what's not selected. It's called select inverse. When would we do that? Well, example right here is Karen. So right now I have the background selected. And what I want selected is Karen, we know we have the background selected because remember I selected this white area and if I hit delete you can see that the background goes away and not Karen. What if I wanted Karen and not the background. Well I'm gonna hit control Z to undo that. Delete that. I just did. How do I select Karen and not the background in this instance? Well what I can do is I can go to the top menu and click on select and then select in verse. And what that does is it says anything that's not selected. Select that anything that is selected. Un selected. It's inverting the selection. So now we have Karen selected and not the background and I can prove that by hitting, delete the exact opposite thing is selected. It's a negative of what you've done. So I'm gonna hit control Z to bring Karen back. So select and versus something that will be using a lot as we go through and edit different things because sometimes it's easier to select the thing that you don't want than it is to select the thing that you do want. Just one more tool in our toolbox of selecting specific things in an image. Okay now why would we want to select things in an image? So I'm going to give you a very very quick demonstration of something ridiculous. I'm gonna put this picture of Karen on top of some beans. It's a basic compositing technique. Now later we're gonna walk through how to do that step by step and you're gonna learn about all kinds of things, layers and layer masks and things. But for right now let me just do something ridiculous and put Karen on beans so you can see what this looks like. So the first thing I want to do is I'm going to delete the background. So again select in verse delete and then I'm going to deselect. So I have Karen on a transparent background. So I want to put some beans behind Karen. So all I need to do is I'm going to go to my finder window, I have this beans image. I'm gonna drag that right over here and drop it punk Now this opens something that looks confusing. But don't worry this is called adobe camera raw, we're gonna learn all about this and every single tool in it later for now if you're following along I have to do is say, okay. And that's gonna open this image and stick it on top of Karen. Now notice that there's this box with an X through it. It's called a bounding box that allows us to resize and rotate and do all kinds of things. So for now, what I wanna do is make these beans as big as Karen. So I'm going to drag the side just grab one of these handles. Make this big, gonna drag the other handle. Mm hmm I'm gonna make that as big as Karen. I'm gonna cover her. And then I'm going to click on the checkbox so it places this and you'll notice that I missed an edge here. So I'm gonna move that over by clicking my move tool. Just move it a little bit. Okay, now I have beans over Karen but I want Karen on the beans. So all I have to do is go over here to these layers and go like that. And I have Karen on beans. It's really ridiculous. But it's sort of fun and you can see that we can select things and remove and add. And that way we can start doing some compositing. Now one of the things you'll notice in this image that when we zoom in, you'll notice that the hair doesn't show the beans through the hair. We'd like to see that this edge is a little bit too hard. We'd like to do that in a little bit nicer way. We're going to do all of those things incoming episodes. So we're gonna learn how to do that and select things that are even more specific than just outlines of people. The other thing that we have to figure out how to do is when we make mistakes. How do we undo that? Well, that's what we're gonna do next. We're gonna do a whole exercise on undoing things in an intelligent way.
Class Materials
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Ratings and Reviews
Katie
Mark did a great job at explaining things and going over them multiple times throughout the lessons. My only issue was that sometimes it went a little faster than I could keep up and I needed to rewind it a bit and start again. But from someone who has never worked in photoshop before I 100% recommend this class to anyone trying to learn.
Terri Schwartz
Student Work
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