Our ever-growing collection of tutorials on Photoshop’s selection tools. A great resource for beginners or anyone wanting to sharpen their selection-making skills.
Below, you’ll find all of our Photoshop selection tools tutorials, with the most recent tutorials listed first. For a better way to learn how to make selections in Photoshop, see our complete Photoshop Selections Tools Learning Guide.
Learn how to use the improved Object Selection Tool in Photoshop 2022, along with its brand new Object Finder, to quickly select people, animals and other objects in your image just by hovering your mouse cursor over them!
Learn the difference between the Select Subject and Remove Background commands in Photoshop and how to use them to remove backgrounds from your photos!
Learn how the powerful and improved Select Subject command in Photoshop CC 2020 lets you instantly select people, animals and more with a single click!
Learn how to use Photoshop’s newest selection tool that lets you quickly select people, animals or other objects in your photos just by dragging around them!
Classic Free Transform is back in Photoshop CC 2019! Learn how to restore the original Free Transform behavior with the new Use Legacy Free Transform option!
In this second part of our tutorial on the new Focus Area selection tool in Photoshop CC 2014, learn how to improve and fine-tune your initial focus-based selections with Photoshop’s powerful Refine Edge command!
Photoshop CC (Creative Cloud) has been updated with exciting new features for 2014! In this first tutorial, learn how Focus Area lets us make selections based on the in-focus areas of an image!
When it comes to making color-based selections in an image, most Photoshop users turn to the Magic Wand Tool because it’s easy and it’s right there in the Tools panel. But if you dig a bit deeper, you’ll find the Color Range command, and in this tutorial, you’ll learn why it’s time to wave that Magic Wand goodbye!
There are lots of times when we need to feather, or soften, our selection edges, but Photoshop’s Feather command gives us no way to preview what we’re doing. In this tutorial, learn a better way to feather selections using Quick Mask mode!
If all you’ve been doing with Photoshop’s basic selection tools is making a new selection every time, you’ve been missing out. In this tutorial, learn how to unlock their full potential by adding to, subtracting from, and intersecting selections!
Tired of drawing selections in the wrong size, shape or location you needed and trying again and again until you get it right? Learn how to fix the selection you’ve already made with Photoshop’s Transform Selection command, and create a fun picture-in-picture effect while you’re at it!
If you’re using Photoshop CS3 or higher, you’ll definitely want to learn all about the Quick Selection Tool and how it lets us select objects in an image simply by painting over them!
The Magic Wand, one of the oldest and most basic selection tools in Photoshop, selects pixels in an image based on tone and color. Learn how it works and how a tool so simple can make replacing the sky in a photo quick and easy!
The Magnetic Lasso Tool is one of the best selection tools in Photoshop, giving us much better results than what the standard Lasso Tool offers in less time and with less effort and frustration. In fact, with a little practice, you may find yourself hopelessly attracted to it!
The Polygonal Lasso Tool, another of Photoshop’s geometry-based selection tools, allows us to easily select objects with straight, flat surfaces with just the click of a mouse!
Photoshop’s Lasso Tool is probably the easiest of the selection tools to use, allowing us to draw freehand selections around objects in a photo as if we were outlining them on paper with a pen or pencil. We’ll also learn how to fix up problem areas and dramatically improve your results!
The Rectangular Marquee Tool may be one of the easiest Photoshop selection tools to use, but it isn’t much help to us when we need to draw oval or circular selections. That’s where the Elliptical Marquee Tool comes in. In fact, the Elliptical Marquee Tool is really just the Rectangular Marquee Tool with extremely rounded corners!
Being able to select objects or areas in a photo is one of the most important Photoshop skills you need, but not all selections need to be complex or time consuming. The Rectangular Marquee Tool, one of Photoshop’s basic selection tools, is perfect for making selections based on simple geometric shapes.
There’s lots of ways to make selections in Photoshop, some simple, some advanced. But having lots of ways to do something doesn’t explain why we need to do it in the first place. In this tutorial, we’ll look at why we need to make selections in Photoshop at all, and why Photoshop doesn’t see things like we do.
Still using the Lasso Tool to select everything that isn’t a rectangle, square or circle? It’s time to take your selections to a whole new level! Learn how to outline objects with paths using the Pen Tool, and then how to easily convert those paths into professional quality selections!