Choose the right grouped tool and isolate pixels or vector regions with marquees, lasso, wand/object selection, pen paths, masks, channels, and saved selections.
Where: Open an image in the image editor → Tool rail / Channels / Paths
Key ideas
- Grouped tool rail: Flyouts remember the last-used tool and group related selection, crop, retouch, paint, vector, navigation, and shape operations behind familiar shortcuts.
- Raster selections: Marquee, lasso variants, magic wand, and object selection isolate pixels for transforms, masks, fills, or local adjustments.
- Vector and channel selections: Pen/curvature, path selection/direct selection, shapes, channels, and saved selections preserve reusable boundaries beyond one temporary marquee.
- Object-aware selection: Object Select (J) adds hover/click object masks and multi-object box unions to the geometric Marquee/Lasso and color-based Magic Wand tools.
Steps
- Choose a selection or pen tool from its flyout and set the tool options.
- Create/refine the boundary, then decide whether it should remain a selection, become a mask, be saved to a channel, or remain a path.
- Apply the edit on the intended layer or create a non-destructive adjustment/fill/filter.
- Deselect and inspect the edge at high zoom, including transparent and high-contrast areas.
Tool groups
- Move; marquee; lasso variants; wand/object select; crop.
- Clone, healing, patch, brush, eraser, fill, gradient, and generative fill.
- Dodge, burn, sponge, smudge, blur, and sharpen.
- Text, pen, curvature, path selection, direct selection, and shapes.
- Hand and zoom.
When to use which selection
- Marquee: exact rectangle/ellipse geometry.
- Lasso family: hand-authored contours or edge snapping.
- Magic Wand: color/tolerance regions.
- Object Select: semantic object under a point or several objects inside a box.
- Select Subject: automatic whole composite or one selected raster layer.
Crop, smart objects, channels, and large-image fixes
The Image Editor now exposes ratio/straighten cropping with optional destructive pixel trimming, smart-object embedded-content operations, a layer filter bar, component-channel viewing, and a live histogram. The focused guides below describe the actual controls and boundaries.
- 4K brush strokes and masks persist more reliably; live changes to brush settings apply without restarting the tool.
- GPU-pressure handling protects mask/brush work, but browser memory and hardware still limit large documents.
- SVG/path vertex editing supports multi-selection, segment movement, and resynchronization after undo.
- Deep duplication keeps masks and nested effect data independent between copies.
Tips
- Save a difficult selection to a channel before making destructive pixel edits.
- Use a mask when you may need to restore hidden pixels later.
Related guides
- Non-destructive image layers, effects, and workspaces
- Use the expanded image editor tools
- Image and Media Management
- Image Editor Object Select: hover, click, and multi-object boxes
- Image Editor: crop ratios, straighten, and canvas transforms
- Image Editor: smart objects, embedded contents, and layer filtering
- Image Editor: component channels and the live histogram