Select part of an image
Marquee, lasso, polygonal lasso, magic wand, object select and select subject, plus adding, subtracting, feathering and refining selections.
Intermediate4 min readUpdated 25 September 2026Editor · Selections
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A selection marks the part of the image you want to work on. While it is active, painting, filling and deleting only affect the selected area, and you can turn it into a mask or a new layer. This article covers every selection tool and how to combine and refine what you select.
Shortcuts use Ctrl. On a Mac, press Cmd.
The selection tools
| Tool | Key | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Rectangle select | M | Boxes, crops, straight-edged areas |
| Ellipse select | Shift+M | Circles and ovals |
| Lasso | L | Rough freehand areas |
| Polygonal lasso | Shift+L | Straight-sided objects: click point to point, then double-click or click the first point to close |
| Object select | W | An object in a photo: drag a box round it and the edges are found for you |
| Magic wand | Shift+W | Flat areas of one colour, such as a plain sky or a studio backdrop |
The Select menu adds Subject (finds the main subject of the whole image), Colour range… (everything close to one colour), and Layer pixels (everything on the selected layer). You can also Ctrl-click a layer's thumbnail in the Layers panel to select its pixels.
Add, subtract and intersect
The first four buttons in the options bar set what a new selection does: New selection, Add to selection, Subtract from selection and Intersect with selection. You can also hold keys as you start dragging:
- Shift
- Add to the selection
- Alt
- Subtract from the selection
- Shift+Alt
- Keep only where the old and new selections overlap
To draw a perfect square or circle, start dragging first, then hold Shift.
Magic wand settings
- Tolerance (0 to 255, default 32): how different a colour can be and still be picked. Raise it if the selection stops short; lower it if it leaks into the subject.
- Contiguous: on, it only picks connected pixels. Off, it picks that colour everywhere in the image.
- Sample all layers: on, it looks at the whole visible design. Off, only the selected layer.
Object select and Select subject
Both run a small model in your browser. Nothing is uploaded. The first time, you are asked before the model downloads, and after that it works offline.
- Select subject (options bar, or Select, Subject) uses MODNet, about 26 MB, which is tuned for people.
- Object select uses BiRefNet lite (about 115 MB) when your browser supports WebGPU, which handles any kind of subject, and MODNet otherwise.
More on the models in AI on this device.
Feather and modify
A hard selection edge can look cut out. Feathering softens it so edits fade in.
- Feather in the options bar (0 to 200 px) applies to the next selection you draw with the rectangle, ellipse, lasso or polygonal lasso.
- Select, Modify, Feather… (Shift+F6) softens the selection you already have.
- The Modify menu also has Expand…, Contract…, Smooth… (rounds off jagged corners) and Border… (a ring along the edge). Each takes a value from 1 to 200 px.
Refine a tricky edge
For hair, fur or soft edges, choose Select and mask… (Ctrl+Alt+R, or the button in the options bar). It opens a workspace of its own:
- Three brushes: Refine edge brush (paint over hair and the edge is worked out from the surrounding colours), Add to selection and Remove from selection, with a Brush size slider.
- View shows the result as Overlay, On black, On white, Black and white or On transparency, so you can check the edge against different backgrounds.
- Edge settings: Radius, Smooth, Feather, Contrast and Shift edge.
- Clean up colour fringes removes the halo of old background colour, with an Amount slider.
- Send to: Selection, Layer mask, New layer with mask, or New layer.
Paint a selection with quick mask
Press Q. The Brush now adds to the selection and the Eraser takes away, shown as a tinted overlay. Soft brushes give soft selection edges. Press Q again to finish. This is often quicker than a lasso for organic shapes.
Using a selection
While a selection is active and you switch to another tool, the right end of the options bar offers Copy to layer, Make mask, Invert and Deselect. Also:
- Ctrl+A
- Select all
- Ctrl+D
- Deselect
- Ctrl+Shift+D
- Reselect the last selection
- Ctrl+Shift+I
- Inverse
- Ctrl+J
- Copy the selected pixels to a new layer
- Delete
- Clear the selected pixels
- Esc
- Deselect
- Brush strokes, fills and gradients stay inside the selection.
- Edit, Fill… (Shift+F5) and Edit, Stroke selection… fill or outline the selection.
- Image, Crop to selection crops the design to it.
- Select, Save selection stores it in the Channels panel so you can load it again later (Ctrl-click the channel). Make work path from selection traces it into a path.
Common problems
- Painting does nothing. You may be painting outside an active selection. Press Ctrl+D to deselect.
- Delete cleared pixels instead of removing the layer. With a selection active, Delete clears the selected pixels. Deselect first to delete the layer.
- The wand picks too much or too little. Adjust Tolerance, or turn Contiguous on.
- Select subject did not load. The model needs to download once. Check your connection and try again.