Free Adobe Photoshop Website Designing Video Tutorial - Magic Wand Tool

In this Free Photoshop Website Designing Video Tutorial, we will show you how to use "Magic Wand Tool". Magic Wand Tool is basically a selection tool and is used for selecting pixels based on color values in an area of the image. It is very important to pick the right starting point while using this tool. If you select the wrong spot, you might get something very different from what you want. Its better if you can use “Magic Wand Tool” on the flat colored image for the accurate selection. We suggest that you view our "Magic Wand Tool Video Tutorial" to understand this visually and more easily.

Press W for selecting this tool. This tool also helps us in website designing. You can cut foreground objects out of the background and can use these images (withount any background) in your webpage layout.

Note: You cannot use the magic wand tool on an image in Bitmap mode.

Steps for using Magic Wand Tool

1. Select File > Open.
2. Select “Magic Wand Tool” from the toolbar.
3. In the image, click on the color or area you want to select. All adjacent pixels within the tolerance range are selected. You can adjust “Tolerance” from the tool options bar.
4. Now, look carefully at the selected area of your image by zooming your image (using zoom tool). If you want to add some missing area or subtract some extra area from your selection then use different selection options given in the tool options bar or just right click your mouse on the image and you have different selection options right in front of you for making your selection perfect.
5. If you right click your mouse, then apart from the options given in the “Tool Options Bar” you have 2 more additional options (i.e. Grow and Similar).
   
   Similar: This will select additional, non-contiguous areas of similar color or shade based on the current tolerance value across the entire image.
   Grow: This will enlarge the selection based on the current tolerance value. Grow adds contiguous pixels, only adding regions that are connected to the original selection.
   
   Alternatively, you can also select “Similar” and “Grow” options from the menu bar. Choose Select > Grow or Select > Similar.
   
   
6. After following all the steps given above, you can make your selection perfect.

Magic Wand Tool options given in the Tool Options Bar:

When you select any magic wand tool, related tool options appear in the Tool Options bar. These options are given below:

1. Selections
   
   
   • New selection: Make new selections.
   • Add to selection: Add a part to the selection.
   • Subtract from selection: Subtract a part from the selection.
   • Intersect with selection: Make a selection that over laps your first selection then only the areas that are overlapping will remain selected.
   
   
2. Tolerance: This determines how closely to match colors in the selection. This ranges from 0 to 255. Enter a low value to select colors very similar to the pixel you click or a higher value to select a broader range of colors.
   
   
3. Anti-aliased: Smoothes the edges of a selection.
   
   
4. Contiguous: To select all areas using the same colors, select Contiguous. Otherwise only the adjacent pixels will be selected.
   
   
5. Use all layers: To select colors from all the visible layers, select “Use All Layers”. Otherwise the “Magic Wand” will select the area from the active layer only.