Quick Selection tool and Refine Edge

Photoshop is all about the selection. You select something, and then you do something with the selection. Nothing more, nothing less and you'll never go wrong using this application.

As in just about every version of Photoshop that has ever been released, CS3 has made even greater strides in the area of making selections. The new Quick Selection Tool used in combination with the Refine Edge palette is about the most helpful and clean way of selecting the edges of an object in your image that I have ever seen. This new revised Quick Selection tool is so smooth. You basically set the parameters of your Quick Selection tool - as if it were a brush - and paint the general area of your image edges and Photoshop is watching what you do, interpreting what you consider to be the general edges of what you are wanting to select and it figures out selecting just what you want it to. It's VERY fast and clean. Then, you can invoke the Refine Edge palette, and you have seemingly infinite control over exactly how the edges of that selection behave. Check out the palette to the right to get an idea of what you could do to "refine" that edge. With radius, feathering, smoothing, and various display settings, I believe this new combo will cut down on my masking and selecting time in a quantifiable way.