
) on your keyboard to increase the contrast value or the comma (, ) to decrease it. To change it on the fly as you're working, press the period key (.

Like the Width option, the Edge Contrast option in the Options Bar can only be set before you click to begin your selection, which doesn't make it very useful. Use lower Edge Contrast values for areas where the color or brightness value of the object and background are similar. The little magnet lets us know that we have the Magnetic Lasso Tool selected, of course, but that's about it: The problem is that by default, we have no way of seeing how wide this area is, and that's because the mouse cursor for the Magnetic Lasso Tool doesn't really tell us anything. Of course, if the Magnetic Lasso Tool was forced to always look at the entire image as it tried to find the edges of your object, chances are it wouldn't do a very good job, so to keep things simple, Photoshop limits the area where the tool looks for edges. As we learned when we looked at why we need to make selections in Photoshop, all Photoshop ever sees is pixels of different color and brightness levels, so the Magnetic Lasso Tool tries to figure out where the edges of an object are by looking for differences in color and brightness values between the object you're trying to select and its background. Why is it called the Magnetic Lasso Tool? Well, unlike the standard Lasso Tool which gives you no help at all and relies entirely on your own ability to manually trace around the object, usually with less than stellar results, the Magnetic Lasso Tool is an edge detection tool, meaning that it actively searches for the edge of the object as you're moving around it, then snaps the selection outline to the edge and clings to it like a magnet!ĭoes this mean that Photoshop actually recognizes the object in the photo that you're trying to select? It can certainly appear that way, but no. Just hold down your Shift key and press the letter L repeatedly to switch between them (note that you may not need to include the Shift key depending on how you have things set up in Photoshop's Preferences). You can cycle through the three lasso tools from your keyboard. Select the other two from the fly-out menu. The lasso tool you selected last appears in the Tools panel. To access it, click and hold your mouse button down on the Lasso Tool until a fly-out menu appears, then select the Magnetic Lasso Tool from the list: Like the Polygonal Lasso Tool, the Magnetic Lasso Tool can be found nested behind the standard Lasso Tool in the Tools panel. We've already looked at the first two - the standard Lasso Tool and the Polygonal Lasso Tool - in previous tutorials. The Magnetic Lasso Tool is one of three lasso tools in Photoshop.
#MAGIC LASSO PHOTOSHOP ROUNDED HOW TO#
This tutorial is from our How to make selections in Photoshop series.ĭownload this tutorial as a print-ready PDF! It's called the Magnetic Lasso Tool, and with a little practice and a basic understanding of how it works, not only will you be a believer, but you just may find yourself hopelessly attracted to it.

That person is just messin' with your head.īut what if someone told you there's a selection tool that can select an object with, say, 80-90% accuracy and all you have to do is drag that same lazy outline around it? Would you believe them now? Still no? Well, that's too bad, because there really is a selection tool like that.


If someone told you there's a selection tool in Photoshop that can select an object in a photo with 100% accuracy and all you have to do is drag a loose, lazy outline around the object with your mouse, would you believe them? No? Good for you.
