How to use the quick selection tool in
Photoshop. In this video, I'm going to
show you how to use the quick selection
tool in quick mask mode so that you can
easily select curved and straight edges.
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Right now, let's get into the content.
So here we are inside Photoshop, and this
image is a photo I took of my coasters
that I used to sell when I did craft
markets with my photography. If you want
to download this image and play along,
there's a video...ah, there's a link in
the video description. So what we're
going to do with this, is we're going to
select this coaster here, and remove it
from the background, or remove all the
background from around-of that coaster.
So we're going to do this with the quick
selection tool to begin with, and then
we're going to use what is called quick
mask mode, and I will explain why in a
second. Now looking at this initially, you
might think well that's pretty easy to
remove. It's got nice edges, defined edges
here. But if you look at this area here,
the base of the coaster there underneath
the image, it actually is quite similar
in brightness and color to what's in the
background. And that's going to make the
quick selection tool have a little bit
of trouble doing it, so that's why we're
going to switch to quick mask mode and
use the brush. So stick around for that.
So a couple of tips on using the quick
selection tool firstly. Where to find it
is probably a good tip?!
Over here on the
left-hand side, it's the fourth icon down
in your Tools menu. And you can see if
you hover your mouse over it, Photoshop
is telling you that you are selecting
the quick selection tool there. So you
can just click on that. You can also
right-click or long left click on that,
and it will bring out this little drop
down menu, and you can select the quick
selection tool or magic wand tool. So
just click on the quick selection tool.
Now before using your quick selection
tool, firstly make sure that the hardness
of the brush is set to 100%. Now you can
do this by holding alt or option and
right clicking with your mouse, and then
dragging your mouse, or pushing your
mouse forward to make it softer; bringing
it back towards you, or sliding it back
towards you to make it harder. Make sure
it's 100% hardness; if it's not, the tool
is going to misbehave and give you a
whole lot of things that you didn't want
selected. So I'll go to 100% hardness, I'll
zoom out, and I will show you how much..
look how much around the brush it's
selecting! A whole lot of stuff I don't
want. So we'll Ctrl D, or command D to
undo that. Change my hardness back to
100%. Now watch how well-behaved the tool
is, it's not really selecting anything
outside of where I am choosing to select.
So 100% hardness, all the time, when you
are using your quick selection tool. Now
you can change the size of the tool by
holding alt or option again, and right
clicking your mouse. Sliding to the right
will make it bigger, sliding to the left
will make it smaller. So I suggest using
a brush that fits nicely inside of what
you're selecting, but doesn't go outside
of it. So now we simply left-click and
select what we want, being sure that the
edges of the tool aren't outside of what
we want to select. You'll have to make it
smaller to get into those corners down
there. So I'm just going to click here,
roughly selecting things...that's pretty
good, that's got the top
the coaster nicely selected. So now in
order to do these bits in here that I
said were quite dark and similar in
color and brightness to the background,
what we're going to do is use quick mask
mode. Quick mask mode allows you to view
your selection as if it were a mask, and
it gives you a color overlay, so you can
then paint using the brush to select
things. And you can do straight lines
which is kind of cool. So you can get to
quick mask mode by either pressing Q on
your keyboard, or you can come down here
to this icon below your color swatches
here, below your foreground and
background color, and clicking on that
icon there, that is your quick mask mode
icon. If you want to change the color of
the overlay, or the opacity; you can do
that by double-clicking the quick mask
icon. And you see it brings up this
options dialog here, where you can
choose whether the color indicates
masked areas or selected areas. You can
choose your color by clicking on that
color swatch there and choosing whatever
color you like. And you can also change
your opacity by just hovering over the
opacity there and sliding it left or
right. I'm going to leave mine at about
52 something there will be good, and click
OK when you're done. Q to go back to
quick mask mode.....and I'm going to choose
the brush tool over here. Now keep in
mind that I'm using Photoshop 2020 here,
so your Photoshop workspace might look a
little bit different to mine. Now
what we can do now with the brush, is
simply left-click..and paint.
So we're painting in our selection now,
so trying to stay inside of that
line of the edge there. And what we can
do now is because we've lifted our mouse
button off here, that is the last point
that we selected with our brush. So we
can do a straight line by going down
here to the end of this straight edge;
just placing our cursor there, hold shift
and click. And you can see the brush will
make a straight line, and you've selected
a perfect straight line along the edge
of the coaster there. And then we can
continue...painting...woah, very badly (laughs),
around the corner of that there. Just get
that bit there. If you go outside of
where you want it selected, and you need
to delete any of your selection; press X
to toggle to white. Make sure that your
foreground and background color are set
to black and white here - I should have
mentioned this earlier. You can do that
by clicking this little icon here that
will reset them back to black
and white. So and make sure that when you
are selecting things that you have black
in the foreground; when you are
deselecting, click this little arrow here,
or press X on your keyboard to switch to
white, which will then deselect. So if I
drag around here, you can see it's erasing
that green overlay and therefore
deselecting that bit there. That's a
little bit rough but we'll leave it
there for now. I'll press X to go back to
black foreground color. We will click
once here and shift-click over there to
select that straight line. There's probably
a little bit of that there that we need
selected. Up here I can see a tiny thin
brown line, which I think might be the
edge of the coaster, so we're going to
select that too. So just brushing around
there gently....and if we let go about
there somewhere and we go across here and
shift....
woah, that's caps lock not shift?! Shift-
click there - I didn't quite get that.
We'll go back here click there maybe.
That's gonna be way too wide but there
we go.
That's pretty good. So now what we can do
is press Q to exit quick mask mode, and
you can see that our selection will turn
back into the marching ants. And we can
now go up, back to our quick selection
tool; go into select and mask, and have a
look at our selection and see how we've
done.
We'll choose on layers so that we can
see it on a transparent background. And I
think that looks fairly nice. Now if you
want to know how to use all of the
controls within here inside of select and
mask; I did a video about using select and
mask a little while ago, and I'll link
that up top there. So go and have a look
at that one when you're finished here. So
that's a really nice selection, and we've
done that using combination of the quick
selection tool and select and mask. So
that's it for this video. I'm Barry
Callister of Barry Callister Photography
and Photographers Freedom. Get out there.
Take some wicked shots and I'll see you
soon. And don't forget to sign up to
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video description. See you next time