Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
nail the selection right away, or it may take several clicks to get everything. If you need to
click more than once, remember to hold down Shift so that each click adds to your selec-
tion—otherwise, each click simply creates a new selection.
As mentioned above, the Magic Wand does best when you offer it a good, solid block of col-
or that's clearly defined and doesn't have a lot of different shades in it. It doesn't work well
for selecting colored areas that have any shading or tonal gradations—you have to click and
click and click.
Elements includes some special Tool Options settings that can help the Wand do a better job:
▪
Tolerance
controls how many shades the tool selects. A higher setting includes more
shades (resulting in a larger selected area), while a lower setting gets you fewer shades
(and a more precise selection). If you set the tolerance
too
high, you'll probably select a
lot more of your image than you want.
▪
Sample All Layers
works if you have a layered file (you'll learn about layers in the next
chapter). Turn on this checkbox to make the Magic Wand select the color in
all
the im-
age's layers. If you want it to select the color only in the active layer, then leave this set-
ting turned off.
▪
Contiguous
makes the Magic Wand select only similarly colored areas touching one an-
other. This checkbox is on by default, but sometimes you can save a lot of time by turn-
ing it off, as
Figure 5-12
explains.
▪
Anti-aliasing
is explained in the box on
Feathering and Anti-Aliasing
.
The Tool Options for the Magic Wand also give you access to the Refine Edge dialog box so
you can fix up the edges of your selection, as explained on
Refining Selection Edges
.
The big disadvantage of the Magic Wand is that it tends to leave unselected, contrasting
areas around the edge of your selection that are a bit of a pain to clean up. So you may want
to give the Quick Selection tool (
Selecting with a Brush
) a spin before trying the Magic
Wand, especially if your goal is to select a range of colors. However, if you put a Magic
Wand selection on its own layer (see
Chapter 6
), you can use Refine Edge or the Defringe
command (
Extracting Objects
)
to help clean up the edges.
