Photoshop 7.0 Selection Tools — Complete Guide

By the Photoshop 7.0 Hub editorial team · Updated May 17, 2026 · 13-minute read

What Is a Selection?

A selection is a region of the image that subsequent operations will affect. When you draw a selection, Photoshop shows it as "marching ants" — an animated dashed outline. Any tool you use, any filter you apply, any colour you fill, only changes pixels inside the marching ants. Press Ctrl+D to deselect (remove the marching ants) and the entire layer is editable again.

Mastering selections is the single largest skill gap between beginner and intermediate Photoshop users. Every advanced operation — masking, compositing, retouching, colour-grading specific areas — starts with a good selection.

Marquee Tools (Rectangular and Elliptical)

Press M. The Rectangular Marquee is active by default. Shift+M cycles to the Elliptical Marquee. There are also single-row and single-column variants in the tool group.

1. Click and drag to draw a rectangle (or ellipse).
2. Hold Shift while dragging to constrain to a square or circle.
3. Hold Alt while dragging to draw from the centre outward.
4. Hold Shift+Alt to draw a square/circle from the centre.
5. Hold Space mid-drag to reposition the selection as you draw.

The Marquee is the right tool for: photo crops with fixed proportions, isolated rectangles on a clean background, selecting a circular logo, framing a vignette.

Marquee options bar

• Feather — softens the selection edge. 0 px = razor-sharp, 50 px = very soft fade. Setting feather before drawing is one way; doing it after via Select → Feather is more flexible.
• Anti-aliased — should always be on for ellipses. Makes the edge smooth instead of jagged-pixel.
• Style: Normal / Fixed Aspect Ratio / Fixed Size — useful when cropping to social-media or print sizes.

Lasso Tools — Three Variants

Press L. The plain Lasso is the freehand variant. Shift+L cycles to Polygonal Lasso, then Magnetic Lasso.

Plain Lasso — freehand

Click and drag a continuous freehand path around the subject. Release to close the selection. Good for rough selections; not great for precision because every wobble of the mouse ends up in the selection edge.

Polygonal Lasso — straight lines

Click at each corner point. Photoshop draws straight lines between clicks. Double-click (or click on the starting point) to close. Best for buildings, vehicles, anything with hard straight edges. Hold Shift while clicking to constrain the next segment to 45°-multiples.

Magnetic Lasso — snap to edges

Click once on the edge of your subject. Move the cursor along the edge — the Lasso line snaps to the nearest high-contrast edge automatically. Click manually to drop an anchor point if the snap goes wrong. Best for high-contrast subjects against plain backgrounds (a dark logo on white, a person against a clear sky).

Magnetic Lasso options:

• Width — how far from the cursor to look for an edge. Smaller = more precise; bigger = catches further away.
• Edge Contrast — minimum contrast to count as an edge. Lower for subtle edges; higher to ignore noise.
• Frequency — how often anchor points are dropped automatically.

Magic Wand — Select by Colour

Press W. The Magic Wand selects all pixels within a tolerance of the one you click. One click on the sky and the entire sky is selected.

Options bar:

• Tolerance — how close in colour the pixels must be (0–255). Default 32. Lower for narrower colour ranges, higher for looser matches.
• Anti-aliased — softens the selection edge by one pixel. Leave on.
• Contiguous — when on, only selects connected pixels of similar colour. When off, selects every matching pixel anywhere in the image (useful for selecting all of a sky split by foreground objects).

Magic Wand is the fastest selection tool when conditions are right: a solid-coloured background or a clean block of similar colour. For complex multi-coloured subjects it fails — use Lasso or Color Range instead.

Color Range — Magic Wand on Steroids

Open Select → Color Range. A dialog opens with an eyedropper and a small preview window.

1. Click anywhere in the image with the eyedropper to set the target colour.
2. Shift+click to add more colours to the selection range.
3. Adjust the Fuzziness slider — like Magic Wand's Tolerance, but interactive.
4. The preview shows the selection in real-time as a white-on-black mask.
5. Click OK to commit.

Color Range is the best Photoshop 7.0 tool for selecting things like:

• A bright sky broken up by tree branches.
• All the red elements of a photograph.
• Highlights or shadows globally (use the dropdown at the top of the dialog → "Highlights" or "Shadows").

Quick Mask — Refine by Painting

Press Q to toggle into Quick Mask mode. The unselected areas of your image now appear with a translucent red overlay (Photoshop 7.0 uses the rubylith colour by convention).

While in Quick Mask:

• Paint with black to add red overlay (which means remove from selection).
• Paint with white to remove red overlay (which means add to selection).
• Use any brush size and softness — soft brushes give feathered selection edges.

Press Q again to exit Quick Mask. Photoshop converts the painted mask back into a proper marching-ants selection.

Quick Mask is the universal selection refinement tool — start with any other selection method, then enter Quick Mask to fine-tune the edges by painting. This is how professional retouchers refine difficult selections.

Combining Selections — Add, Subtract, Intersect

The most powerful technique with any selection tool is combining selections using modifier keys. These work with every selection tool above:

For example: use Magic Wand to select the entire sky, then hold Alt and use the Lasso to subtract the tree branches that the Wand accidentally included.

Modifying an Existing Selection

Once you have a selection, several menu commands let you modify it:

Saving and Loading Selections

A selection can be saved to a channel and reloaded later — perfect for complex selections you want to reuse:

1. With a selection active: Select → Save Selection. Name it. Click OK.
2. The selection is now stored as a new channel in the Channels palette.
3. To reload later: Select → Load Selection → pick the saved channel.

Saving with a clear name (e.g., "Subject", "Sky", "Background") is critical for documents that will be edited over multiple sessions.

Loading a Layer as Selection

Ctrl+click the thumbnail of any layer in the Layers palette. The selection matches the non-transparent pixels of that layer. This is invaluable for compositing — you can quickly select the silhouette of any subject that has been isolated on its own layer.

• Ctrl+Shift+click — adds to current selection.
• Ctrl+Alt+click — subtracts.
• Ctrl+Alt+Shift+click — intersects.

A Recommended Workflow for Difficult Selections

1. Start with the rough cut using whichever tool fits the subject (Magic Wand for clean backgrounds, Pen for hard edges, Color Range for variable colour).
2. Use Shift with the Lasso or Magic Wand to add missing parts; Alt to subtract leaked-in areas.
3. Press Q to enter Quick Mask. Refine the edge by painting with a soft brush.
4. Press Q again to exit.
5. Apply Select → Feather with 1–2 px to soften any remaining jagged edges.
6. Either apply the operation you needed the selection for, or click the layer-mask icon on the Layers palette to convert the selection to a non-destructive layer mask.

For more on layer masks (the non-destructive way to use a selection), see our layers tutorial.

FAQ