Make selections in your composites

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With selections, define an area that you can further edit to enhance your images and composites. You can easily use any of the various selection tools in Photoshop to quickly make a selection.

Object Selection tool

Updated in Photoshop 24.0 (October 2022 release)

The Object Selection tool simplifies the process of selecting an object or region in your image — people, cars, pets, sky, water, buildings, mountains, and more. You can simply draw a rectangle or lasso around an object or region or let the Object Selection tool automatically detect and select an object or region within the image. Selections made with the Object Selection tool are now more precise and preserve details on the edges of the selection, which means you spend less time getting those perfect selections.

You can access the Object Selection tool at the following locations:

• From the main application toolbar in Photoshop
• From the toolbar in the Select And Mask workspace

Watch the short video below to learn how to use the Object Selection tool in Photoshop.

Read the full article to understand the step details. 

To select objects or regions in an image using the Object Selection tool, follow these steps:

Selection improvements

Introduced in Photoshop 24.0 (October 2022 release)

Select elements like the sky, water, natural ground, plants, or architecture in one click using the powerful Object Selection Tool. 

Refine your selection in the Select and Mask workspace or use the improved auto-detection feature to perform other specific adjustments. 

Use Object Selection Tool in the existing object detection/selection tool in the left panel and then the Select and Mask workspace to make better and faster selections.

Follow these steps if you want to select, say, the sky with a single click: 

One-click Delete and Fill

Introduced in Photoshop 24.0 (October 2022 release)

Use the one-click Delete and Fill Selection feature to remove unwanted objects from your images or to retouch images with complex backgrounds.

Simply use the Object Selection Tool to make your selection and use the following keyboard shortcut to remove it:

• macOS: Shift + Delete
• Windows: Shift + Backspace

But if you're working with the Lasso Tool or any other Photoshop tool, right-click the mouse to access the contextual menu and select Delete and Fill Selection to delete unwanted objects from your image. 

Make improved hair selections

With Photoshop 23.4 (June 2022) release, the Object Selection tool has been enhanced for making better hair selections in human portrait images. Object Selection tool can now recognize portraits and apply hair refinement to get a mask as good as that delivered by Select Subject.

Simply open your portrait image and select the Object Selection tool from the toolbar and make your selection by either clicking on the portrait or by creating a lasso or marquee around the person and obtain the mask with all the hair details captured. 

After your selection is done using the Object Selection tool, you can further improve the mask results with the Refine Hair option in the Select And Mask workspace in the options bar for images other than human portraits like pets/animals/fur more naturally.

Mask all objects in a layer in a single click

Use this huge timesaver that leverages the power of Adobe Sensei to generate masks for all objects in the desired layer in a single click.

Choose Layer > Mask All Objects and watch Photoshop easily generate masks for all the objects detected within your layer with just a single click.

Select Subject

Optimized for better portrait selections in Photoshop 21.2 (June 2020 release)

Beginning with Photoshop 21.2 (June 2020 release), Select Subject is now content-aware and applies new custom algorithms when it detects a person is in the image. When creating a selection of portrait images, treatment around the hair area has been vastly improved to create a detailed selection of hair. To temporarily turn off the content awareness, you can press and hold the Shift key while performing Select Subject.  

The Select Subject command lets you select the most prominent subject in an image in a single click. Powered by advanced machine learning technology, Select Subject is trained to identify a variety of objects in an image—people, animals, vehicles, toys, and more. 

Select subject cloud service

Make improved selections and get high-quality images with cloud processing in Select Subject.

Simply navigate to the Image Processing section in the Preferences dialog box and toggle between the Cloud mode or Device mode to get your desired results. 

How is the Object Selection tool different from the Select Subject command?

The Object Selection tool is useful when you only need to select one of the objects or part of an object within an image that contains multiple objects. While the Select Subject command is designed to select all the main subjects in the image.

To learn more about the Select Subject command, read the next topic described in this article below.

Quick Selection tool

You can use the Quick Selection tool  to quickly "paint" a selection using an adjustable round brush tip. As you drag, the selection expands outward and automatically finds and follows defined edges in the image.

Magic Wand tool

The Magic Wand tool lets you select a consistently colored area (for example, a red flower) without having to trace its outline. You specify the selected color range, or tolerance, relative to the original color you click.