Welcome to the Corel series of tutorials on using Selection tools in
PaintShop Pro. This one will cover the magical Magic Wand tool located in the
selection tool fly out of the main toolbar. Before we get started, you can
download the sample images I'll be using so you too can follow along. We'll go
over the many options available to the Magic Wand then show you a couple of
examples of actually using it. The Magic Wand selects based on the color, hue,
brightness or opacity of an object. This tool is designed to select an area that
has distinctly different pixels than those in other areas of the image. For
example, a pink rose surrounded by green leaves or a bright area in an otherwise
dark image. Therefore this tool works best when the area you want to select
stands out from the rest of your image. Otherwise you might get frustrated when
the tool also starts selecting parts of your image you don't want it to so keep
that in mind. The magic wand offers various criteria for creating a
selection. These choices appear in the Property bar after selecting the
Magic Wand. Let's take a quick review of them. Under None, this option will select
the entire image when I click anywhere. Selections are identified by the moving
dotted line around the selection border. This border is commonly referred to as
the "marching ants." Note: to deselect the entire area do a Ctrl +D; to add pixels to
a selection hold down the Shift key; and to delete areas hold down the Ctrl key and
click. The following modes will also select based on the tolerance
level you've selected here. Higher tolerance levels will select more pixels.
To make sure we can see the mode differences the best I'll try to click
on the same part of this flower each time I try a different mode. I'll try to
go through these rather quickly as I recommend you try them yourself to see
the differences up close and personal. Let's try RGB Value. This mode
selects pixels that match the red, green and blue values of the pixel you
first click. I'll use a low tolerance around 20, deselect and then use a
higher tolerance of maybe around 70. A
higher tolerance allows me to select almost all the yellow portion of the
flower but not the red parts. I'll deselect again. Let's try Color. This mode
selects pixels that match the shading variations of the pixel you clicked. I'll
try a high tolerance level and then a lower tolerance level again. Let's
deselect and try Brightness. Brightness selects pixels that match the perceptual
lightness value of the pixel you click. Notice when I try this mode at a higher
tolerance it actually picks different colors but sticks to similar lightness
values. This is especially noticeable if I click the red part of the flower.
It picks not only red values but other colors that meet the brightness value of
that red, which is darker than the yellow. What it won't do, unless Contiguous at
the top is deselected, is jump to and select other areas with similar values.
The entire selection here is connected. If you want additional areas, hold down
the Shift key to add additional areas or Ctrl key to subtract an area. Otherwise
any new click will replace the previous one. I'll show you the effects of
Contiguous a bit later. Let's try Perceptual. This mode selects
pixels that match the perceptual brightness and shading variation of the
pixel you click. It's pretty close to using Brightness mode. Traditional mode is
similar to the RGB value mode. It selects pixels that match the red, green and blue
values with a bias towards the lightness variations. This match mode is therefore
more discriminating than the RGB value match mode. Because it's called traditional
it's the most common mode that people use.
Let's try All Opaque. This mode selects all the pixels that are not completely
invisible, that is having an opacity value of 1 or greater.
Choosing this mode will disable the tolerance control. If I click in this
image it selects every pixel, as every pixel has an opacity value. Using the
Opacity mode selects pixels that match
the opacity value of the pixel you click - great for working with transparent
images. So this should help you distinguish the various selection modes.
You'll start getting the hang of these as you try them yourself. Let's go over
the other options in the Property bar for using the Magic Wand. I'm going to return to
the Traditional mode. Tolerance setting controls how closely the selected pixels
match the pixel you clicked in the image. I used this earlier. At low settings, only
very similar pixels are chosen. At higher settings, a wider range of pixels are
selected. Feather softens the edge of a selection by specifying a fade width,
somewhere between 0 and 200 pixels.
Here's a comparison.
If I check Use All Layers, this searches for matching pixels across all the layers in
your image. Contiguous selects only pixels that connect to the pixel you
click.
Anti-alias produces a smooth edged selection by partially filling in pixels
along the edge, making them semi-transparent. You can use this option
inside or outside the selection marquee. So what's the difference between feather
and anti-aliasing? Well from what I can tell it's oftentimes difficult to see
until you zoom. Anti-aliasing makes an edge look smoother by making the pixels
fade out to transparency from an edge, while feathering blurs the pixels.
One last edit option I'd like to show you is to how to add really small
holes to your selection that would otherwise be too small to try and
shift-click on. If I create a traditional selection on this flower and you
shift-click to add the red parts I still have quite a few smaller areas to add. In
this case I'll go to Selections > Modify > Remove Specs and Holes. I'll start with
some small areas such as 10 x10 pixels but it's not much help.
If I go to 100 x 100, all the smaller holes are now added to my selection and
I'll click OK. Finally, let's see how this tool works on images containing hair.
I'll bring the image of the brunette woman to the forefront. In the first
selection tutorial I touched on the Auto Selection tool. It's so awesome that it
bears repeating. I simply draw a marquee around the woman and her hair.
If there are parts I want to add or subtract I can then return to the Magic
Wand to do so, using the Shift key to add or the Ctrl key to subtract. OK I think
that does it. I'll grab the Pan tool, right-click on the image and Copy, then
I'll right-click again and choose Paste > Paste as New Image. That came out
pretty well. If there are more parts to delete, you can use the Eraser tool.
In conclusion, the best way to learn about these modes is to just
experiment with them. Let undo and Ctrl + D become your friend and try different
modes and tolerance levels. You'll soon find your favorite ones to use and how to get
the results you want quickly. If you're watching this video on YouTube you'll
find a link in the description below that will take you to our tutorial page
on the Discovery Center. Here you can download a written copy of this tutorial
to follow along and find other helpful tutorials for PaintShop Pro.