Subtracting Areas From The Initial Selection

As I examine the photo more closely, I notice that there's a small, narrow gap in the sculpture between the side of the body and the arm on the right, with the background showing through it:

I need to remove that area from the selection. To do that, with the Magnetic Lasso Tool still selected, I'll hold down my Alt (Win) / Option (Mac) key, which will temporarily switch me to the Subtract from Selection mode. A small minus sign ( - ) appears in the bottom right corner of the cursor icon letting me know that I'm about to remove part of the existing selection:

With Alt / Option held down, I'll click once to set my starting point, then I'll release my mouse button and drag around the edge of the area I need to remove. Once I start dragging, I can release the Alt / Option key. There's no need to keep it held down the entire time. Photoshop will keep me in Subtract from Selection mode until I click back on the initial point to complete the selection. I'll press the Caps Lock key once again to switch to the circle icon so I can see exactly where Photoshop is looking for edges:

Once I've made my way around the gap, I'll click back on the initial starting point to close the selection, removing the unwanted area. Only the sculpture itself, along with the platform it's sitting on, remains selected:

With the sculpture now selected, anything I do next will affect only the sculpture. The rest of the photo will be ignored. For example, I can press the letter M on my keyboard to quickly select Photoshop's Move Tool, then I'll click on the sculpture and drag it into a second image I have open to give it a different background:

Removing A Selection

When you're done with your selection outline and no longer need it, you can remove it by going up to the Select menu at the top of the screen and choosing Deselect, or you can press the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+D (Win) / Command+D (Mac). Or, for the fastest way to remove a selection, simply click anywhere inside of the document with the Magnetic Lasso Tool or with any of Photoshop's other selection tools.

The Magnetic Lasso Tool is without a doubt one of the best selection tools we have to work with in Photoshop, giving us much better results than we could get with the standard Lasso Tool in less time and with less effort and frustration. However, it does take a bit of practice with the Width and Edge Contrast options before you'll feel at home with it, and as with most things in life, it's not perfect.

For best results, use the Magnetic Lasso Tool as a great way to begin a selection, since it can usually do 80-90% of the work for you. Drag the Magnetic Lasso Tool around the object once, creating your initial selection, then zoom in and scroll around the selection outline looking for any areas where the Magnetic Lasso Tool messed up. Use the standard Lasso Tool, along with the Add to Selection and Subtract from Selection modes, to fix up any problems. For details on how to do that, be sure to check out our standard Lasso Tool tutorial.

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