Today’s Question: If I remember correctly there is a way in Photoshop to simply point to an object and have that object selected automatically, so that a targeted adjustment can be applied. But I can’t find where that is. Can you point me in the right direction?
Tim’s Quick Answer: With the Object Selection tool in Photoshop, you can automatically select individual objects within an image, based on image analysis, simply by clicking on the object you want to select.
More Detail: There are more than a few tools and commands for creating selections in Photoshop, but when there is a specific subject in an image that you want to select, the Object Selection tool can often provide a fast way to create an accurate selection.
To get started, choose the Object Selection tool from the toolbar. This tool shares a button with the Quick Selection and Magic Wand tools, so if the icon for one of those tools is displayed you can right-click or click-and-hold on the button to bring up a flyout menu.
With the Object Selection tool active, click the gear icon on the Options bar and confirm that the “Object Finder” checkbox is turned on. Then hover your mouse over the image, and a color overlay will highlight any object that has been detected under your mouse pointer. You can then click on the object you want to select, and a selection will be created based on the overlay that had been displayed.
You can use the Add and Subtract options to refine the selection based on other objects, such as to create a selection that is comprised of more than one object, or to remove an area of a selection based on an object that is included in that selection. Similarly, you can refine the selection using any of the other selection tools or commands.
While the Object Selection tool isn’t perfect, in many cases it will provide an excellent selection for individual objects in a photo. At the very least, it generally does a very good job of providing a starting point for a selection that would have been more time-consuming or challenging using other tools.
