Magic Wand Tool : Selects the Pixels of Same Color

Magic Wand Tool is one of the most popular and useful selection tools of Photoshop. This tool is used to select the same colored area inside the image within an instant by a single click. 

Magic Wand : An easy to use selection tool

This tool can be seen in the Tool Panel right beneath the Move Tool.  In order to select that tool you can not only click on that tool in the tool panel but you can also hit W on the keyboard.

Magic Wand Tool can be selected by hitting W on the keyboard

Whenever you select Magic Wand Tool, pointer of your mouse assumes the shape of the icon that represents Magic Wand Tool in the Tool Panel and setting options for the same tool appear instantly in the option bar. These options are consist of different selection types or modes( e.g. New Selection, Add to Selection, Subtract from Selection and Intersect with Selection),  Tolerance, Anti-aliased, Contagious, and Use All Layers.

 Selection types, Tolerance, Anti-aliased, Contiguous and Use All Layer

Types or Modes of Selection

New Selection

Whenever this mode is on, you cannot apply Magic Wand Tool on the same image twice and whenever you make a new selection after making the first one, the first selection gets removed all by itself.

Add to Selection

When this mode is on, you can make selection on the same image two or more than two times quiet easily. With this mode selected, Photoshop doesn't remove the first selection when you make the second one.

Subtract from Selection

This mode is used only when you want to deselect only some part of the selected area but not the entire selection at the same time.

Intersect with Selection

This mode  selects the combine or intersecting parts of the two selected areas.

Tolerance

This option is used to increase or decrease the range of selection made by the Magic Wand Tool. For instance if you set the value of Tolerance equal to 0 and click on white  (#FFFFFF) color , Magic  Wand Tool will select all the pixels of exactly the same color in the image and it will not include the pixels of any color in the selection other than the ones containing pure white (#FFFFFF) color . But if you set some higher Tolerance value e.g. 10, you will notice that the Magic Wand Tool will increase it’s selection range and it will include the pixels with colors similar to white in the selection rang along with the pure white pixels.

Anti-aliased

We always put check inside the check box named Anti-aliased when we want smooth edges of the selected area.

Contagious

We always put check inside the check box named Contagious when we want to select only those areas of the image which are joined together.

Use All Layers

We put check inside the check box named Use All Layers when we want to apply the Magic Wand Tool on all the layers of the document at the same time.

This is all about the Magic Wand Tool of Photoshop. I am certain, this post will be proved helpful to all my readers, if so, kindly let me aware of that by subscribing your comment.