Magic Wand Tool
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PSDTUTS Photoshop Wiki / Photoshop Tools / Magic Wand Tool
The magic wand, like the marquee and lasso tools, is a selection tool. The magic wand selects regions of a similar color, making it easy to cut backgrounds out of images, or even to take a single object from it.
[edit] Magic Wand Options
Tolerance determines the range of color that Photoshop uses to make a selection. For instance, at 0 tolerance, Photoshop will only select pixels of identical shade and color. As you increase the tolerance, Photoshop becomes more liberal in the range of colors it selects.
Anti-aliasing smoothes out the edges of the selection. You’ll almost always want to tick this box.
Contiguous tells Photoshop to only select adjacent pixels. If you wish to remove large backgrounds, for instance, you would ensure that the Contiguous setting is off.
Sample All Layers tells Photoshop to gather data from all visible layers, not just the selected layer, to determine which pixels to select.
[edit] Usage
You need to set the options to suit the selection you want to make. If it’s a large background with many colors, the tolerance needs to be set higher. You’ll rarely need a tolerance setting of 0, unless the background is one flat color and the foreground object you’re cutting out doesn’t contrast with the background very much.
The trick is to find the right level of tolerance that spans the various colors in the area you want to cut out, but not so many colors that it encroaches on the areas of the image you don’t want to select.
You can now click on the area you wish to select with the magic wand tool and manipulate it.
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