How to Use the Magic Wand Tool in Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop has a great selection of tools. The magic wand tool is one of the more fun ones to use. When you click on a certain color in an image, it will select all the areas in that image that have similar colors to the one you clicked. With all of the settings available for the magic wand tool, it's easy to get your graphic work done quickly.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Adobe Photoshop

1. Open an image in Adobe Photoshop that you can use while learning how to use the magic wand tool.

2. Select the magic wand tool from the Photoshop toolbox. It is the second icon on the right side and is a picture of a wand.

3. Choose from the boxes that follow the picture of the magic wand in the magic wand options bar by selecting the first box (create a new selection), the second box (add to an existing selection), the third box (subtract from an existing selection) or the fourth box (intersect with the existing selection.)

4. Type a number between 0 and 255 in the "Tolerance" text box. A higher number will let you select a greater range of colors and the lower the number will let you select shades only very close to the original color you selected.

5. Check "Anti-aliased" if you want the fill edges to be smooth, "Contiguous" if you want only adjacent pixels of the same color to be selected and "Use All Layers" if you have multiple layers and you want to apply the magic wand tool to all of them.

6. Click the color you want to select on your image.

7. Use the Lasso tool to adjust your selection if necessary and then copy and paste your selection into a new document.

Tips & Warnings

• Add or subtract your magic wand selection by using the Shift and Alt keys.