#How to use magic wand tool cs5 how to#

It shares a slot with two other selection tools: the Quick Selection tool and the Object Selection tool. The location might vary slightly depending on how you have Photoshop set up, but by default, when using the ‘Essentials’ workspace, the Magic Wand tool is the fourth icon down in the toolbar on the left-hand side. Where is the Magic Wand Tool in Photoshop? There are times when the Magic Wand tool will prove fiddly, but there are ways to tell it to be smarter. Instead of having to draw a complicated selection around a subject manually using the lasso or pen option, you can simply get Photoshop to use some maths - I mean magic - so that it does the hard work for you! This makes it ideal for quickly grabbing a subject from a relatively plain color background so that you can, for example, cut it out, copy it or create a mask. Anything that is too dissimilar is ignored and left out of the selection. When you select an image using the Magic Wand tool, Photoshop looks at the pixel you clicked on and makes a selection based on the color and tone of that pixel.Īreas of surrounding pixels that are similar in tone and color become part of the selection.

#How to use magic wand tool cs5 how to#

Understanding how it works will help you to figure out when best to use it, and how to adjust the settings to improve its functionality. While certainly behaving as though it is magic, it does have some limitations.

In short, this tool allows you to make a complex selection within an image just using a single click.

The Magic Wand tool was one of Photoshop’s earliest features and gave users an idea of just how powerful the software was.