Photoshop CS3's neat new quick selection tool

[Ian]

When I create product shots like this:




..the background is not usually as obligingly as clean as this. I depend a lot on background selection for cleaning things up. This has, until now, meant depending on various laborious selection tools, like the magic wand and painting in Quick Mask mode.

Vertus Fluid Mask, which I'm also testing at the moment, takes a lot of the slog and error out of this, but Photoshop CS3 also has a trick up its sleeve - the new Quick Selection tool. This is a companion to the familair magic wand. Here's a movie that demonstrates how useful this tool is:

The Quick Selection tool really speeds up the initial selection. I then use Quick Mask to tidy up a missed bit of the selection and then Levels white dropper to make the selected background white, without losing the shadow under the product. In fact in the actual picture I produced at the top, I feathered the selection of the shadow, using Quick Mask, to preserve its soft edge better.

Ian

[Stephen]

Re: Photoshop CS3's neat new quick selection tool

COOL

[Ian]

Re: Photoshop CS3's neat new quick selection tool

COOL

Even better, the Quick Selection tool has add and subtract modes so you can reverse or add the power of the selection in tight areas (click by click and by altering the brush size) as well as wide one (by painting). The more I use it, the more I see it works like Vertus Fluid Mask, up to a point. Fluid Mask is definitely more powerful, but Photoshop has made up a lot of ground.

On top of that, the selection edge enhancement has loads of new goodies, see:

And - at last! - real time preview of the edge effect in the work space window! Yay

Ian

[Bearface]

Re: Photoshop CS3's neat new quick selection tool

That's a great feature. I'm really looking forward to getting my hands on CS3

[Autumn]

Re: Photoshop CS3's neat new quick selection tool

Me too, I am so lazy with selections. I'll put it on my Christmas List.


We haven't any Christmassy Smilies, yet Julia.



Audrey

[JonMikal]

Re: Photoshop CS3's neat new quick selection tool

another awesome realtime tutorial. looks like we'll be seeing a lot of these in the future would you mind sharing which capture software you use?

ok, you made me do it...i've d/l cs3. now we're hunting for our serial numbers....ARGH!