Photoshop CS3 - Quick Selection Tool (AKA The Death of the Tragic Wand)

One of the most improved features of Photoshop CS3 is one of the simplest and one that although many pro designers will not use, is much improved from previous versions.

One of the first tools people used when starting out in Photoshop was the Magic Wand tool to make large selections, although this was OK for amateur users it was severely limited and pretty useless for anything other than the most crude, rudimentary selections.

I'm sure most of you will use the pen tool or other methods to make your fine selections but the new Quick Selection Tool is actually pretty good, in fact I'd go so far to say as it's a very useful tool.

While it's still never going to replace more accurate methods for detailed design work, compared to it's predecessor it's a joy to use.

It took me a while to get used to it but the simplicity and accuracy of it makes it really useful for quick mash ups and it really comes in to it's own in compositioning work.
It's very similar to the Magic Wand tool in many ways but works in a much more sensible way relying on areas rather than colours to determine the selection area.

You just paint over the area you want to select and if it happens to include something you don't want you can simply hold down ALT and paint it back out of the selection again and this is actually pretty accurate at getting the right selection.

Once you've got what you need you can go in and refine the edges of your selection where you can feather the edges, alter the smoothness, expand or contract the selection if you need to adjust it etc.

If you haven't already given it a go then grab a few photos and spend an hour or so playing with it if you have the time.
I've had Photoshop CS3 for a few months now and only just got round to actually putting the tool through it's paces recently.

I for one will be using this new feature quite a bit, although it is hard to go back to using tools like this after learning to hate the Magic Wand, it's well worth using and Adobe have made a major improvement here.

Check it out for yourself.