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Photoshop CS3 - Quick Selection Tool

If you are not already using the quick select tool you should give it a go - it can be far more efficient than the magic wand or magnetic lasso tools.

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

Table of contents

The quick select tool allows you to select areas of photographs more quickly than standard tools. Although it is not perfect it can give amazing results and save you time.

The task

In this example we have a photograph from Flickr by steve.wild. We are going to assume that we want to change the colours of the doors. With the Quick Selection Tool it is simple.

Original Photo of Doors

The technique

Select the Quick Selection Tool from the menu (shortcut W). In the top menu bar you will see that you can select your brush size. Depending on what you want to select choose an appropriate brush size. To make your selection just click and drag on the area you want. Generally the tool does a great job but you can refine the selection by adding (SHIFT) or subtracting (CTRL).

Selecting using the quick selection tool

After using the Quick Selection Tool I’ve selected both doors in a matter of seconds.

So I keep the original image I’m going to create a non-destructive adjustment layer. At the bottom of the layers panel click “Create New Fill or Adjustment Layer” and select Hue / Saturation… This brings up the Hue and Saturation dialog.

Adding the adjustment layer

Then simply move the sliders until you get your desired color. Easy!

Color changing with the quick selection tool

Here’s a video of the whole thing so you can see how quickly it can be done.

Of course you could also use the Color Replacement Tool but I like this way!

Have an update or suggestion for this article? You can edit it here and send me a pull request.

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