Using the Magic Wand and Selection Tools

As I have previously mentioned, Paint Shop Pro comes with a vast array of preset tools for you to use. Thus tutorial is going to walk you through using of the Magic Wand

Magic Wand - This is the tool you will use a lot to select areas of a tag to add effects or colour.

The above screen shot was taken in Paint Shop Pro 9, but whatever version you are using the tool will look very similar. The shot shows the default setting that the program sets it at. The other settings are shown below:-

When set at the default setting, the wand will only let you choose one area at a time. If set at Add (Shift) you may choose more than one area.

The tolerance determines how closely to match colours in the selection. At it's maximum setting of 255 it will select everything, whereas 0 or 1 is very precise.

Anti Alias defines a smooth edge to the selection.

Contiguous will sect only areas that are joined together.

Feather will expand your selection by the number of pixels stated.

Okay, let's have a play and see what happens with various settings. Right Click on the gradient image above and save to your hard drive, then open it in PSP.

The image actually consists of 256 shades of grey!!

With your magic wand set at the default setting, click into the centre of the image:-

Go to undo:-

Now increase the tolerance to 50 and click into the centre again:-

As you can see a far bigger area of the image is now selected. Play around with the settings to see what various tolerance and feather settings will give you.

Now set the Mode to Add (Shift) and the Tolerance to 10, and select a few areas of the image:-

Now set your tool back to Replace Mode, Tolerance 20, and Feather 10:-

Click in the centre of your image again :-

Now compare this with your original selection at 20 Tolerance. As you can see the selection is bigger. One thing to bear in mind when using a Feather Selection, is that if you invert the selection:-

The selection will invert by the amount of the feathering as well:-

Whereas inverting the original selection gives you this:-

Now lets try the Selection Tool:-

The selection tool gives you the ability to select shaped selections in your image. try any of them out on your gradient, I used the hexagon with mine:-

Now hit the delete key on your keyboard :-

Click on Undo, then Invert the Selection and hit delete again:-

I hope you now feel a little more confident about using the Selection Tool and Magic Wand. I will deal with the Freehand Selection Tool in another tutorial.

If you have any queries, please contact me.

 

This Tutorial was written in May 2010 by Helen Peachey, and the concept of the tutorial is copyrighted.
Please feel free to LINK to the tutorial and/or print it out for your personal use,
but please do not copy it in any way to put online, pass out or re-write without permission.
The image you create using this tutorial is for you to do what you wish except for monetary gains or for merchandising.
© Peachies Designs and Tutorials. Any Resemblance to another tutorial is purely coincidental.