Photoshop Tools | Magnetic Lasso Tool

We are continuing from the last Photoshop Tools Tutorial about Lasso Tool. We are carrying on our journey to learn how to use Photoshop and how to Photoshop photos properly. We shall learn how to use Photoshop’s Magnetic Lasso Tool in today’s tutorial.

Magnetic Lasso Tool is really an amazing selection tool in Adobe Photoshop. It makes perfect selection if it is used properly. You have to hover your cursor around the borders of your object. Magnetic lasso tool will automatically find the edges of your object by the difference of colors of edges and background. It will work more accurately if the difference between colors of background and object is bigger. If there is a minor difference between colors then the accuracy may drop but the change of settings may still increase the performance.

Magnetic Lasso Tool | Selection

Lets make a selection with Magnetic Lasso Tool…

1. Press L key on the keyboard to select Lasso tool and then press Shift + L two times to select Magnetic Lasso Tool. You can also directly select it from the toolbox.
2. Create first anchor point from where you want to start selecting your object.
3. Keep creating anchor points on the border of the object until you reach to the first point.
4. Lastly click on the first anchor point to make the selection.

See how accurate and perfect the selection is made. This is the magic of Magnetic Lasso Tool. Now if Move Object: If you want to Move your object click V key on the keyboard and move the object wherever you want. You can also use arrow keys on the keyboard for this purpose.

Now you can move, copy, cut, delete or whatever you want to do with your selection.

 Magnetic Lasso Tool | Options

There are some options in magnetic lasso tool options bar which can be altered according to the requirements.

1. Option highlighted with orange color is frequency which indicates how frequently you want to use the anchor points while selecting.
2. Contrast option is highlighted in green. Contrast tells Photoshop that how much contrast should be regarded as a border of the object.
3. Option highlighted with red is for changing pen width by using tablet pressure.
4. Pen Width option (highlighted in blue) tells the Photoshop about the area in which it has to look for the borders of the object.

How to Photoshop | Extra

Other options works same as explained in the previous tutorials. Photoshop Tips and Techniques for Magnetic Lasso Tool are shared in Photoshop Tips and Technique section of How to Photoshop.