How To Use The Magic Wand Tool In Photoshop

Ever wished you had a magic wand? Well if you use Adobe Photoshop then your dream just came true. At the top of the left sidebar, fourth button down is the quick selection tool, hover over that for a second or two and you will see that hiding behind it is the magic wand tool. It might not grant your every wish, but it is an incredibly versatile and useful tool.

One basic of understanding how to make the most of Photoshop is that itís more about the shapes than it is about colours. What Photoshop does best is manipulate existing images, and the key to manipulating anything is getting a good hold on it, which in image terms means defining the path around what you want to alter. That’s what the magic wand does, it’s a very clever selection tool, and itís an absolute master at defining paths in even the most complex image, which means it can pick out the bit you want to change without you spending ages manually drawing around it.

This is useful for isolating elements of an image, or a range within an image for manipulation, duplication, isolation and probably as few otherations too.

The magic wand selects based on two simple things: colour (the RBG or CMYK value of each pixel) and tone (the brightness/shade of each pixel) and you can alter the tolerance of the wand to these values by changing the number at the top of the screen next to where it says, if you havenít guessed already, tolerance.