4 Mind-Blowing Ways to Use the Photoshop Selection Brush Tool Like a Pro!

Photoshop Selection Brush

Learn how to use the Photoshop selection brush tool like a pro with these 4 mind-blowing techniques! Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced user, this video will help you master this powerful Photoshop tool. The Photoshop Selection Brush tool can be used to make selections that have a lot of flexibility. Here are 4 ways you can use the Photoshop Selection Brush tool to make your workflow faster.

Use the Photoshop Selection Brush to remove blemishes

 Let’s explore using the Selection Brush in Adobe Photoshop.  We can use it as an alternative to making other types of selections.  So in this example, we might want to remove a blemish.  There are many ways to remove blemishes.  you could use the spot healing brush.  And you can see.  You can work away at it like this.  That’s 1 alternative.  If you needed to make a bunch of selections and do it all at once.  could use the lasso tool.  And select all of them.  These edges here are hard, though.  Of course, you can feather these  a lot of different ways, With a selection brush you have more flexibility.  

With the Selection Brush tool.  You could just paint over the area.  You can adjust the opacity up here.  You can adjust the hardness and the size of the brush.  I’m going to put the hardness all the way down.  You know and have the opacity up.  So I can see my selection.  And if I just paint over I have a visual clue of what I’m going to be working with.  I could also change. The overlay color if I need to.  

If I click on another tool, I can see you have selections.  At this point.  You can use Content-aware fill.  And see if you like that.  Or you can use generative fill in the contextual task bar.  Leave the prompt blank and click generate.  There you have it.  Even on the first variation, It looks pretty good. The skin texture is intact  that is a quick example of how you would use the selection brush.  and generative fill to remove blemishes.  

Underwater scene, using opacity with selection brush, generative fill a dolphin

Here’s an example of an underwater photo.  And you can see there’s a stingray.  There at the bottom of the photo.  so if I want to put say a dolphin in this photo.  I’m going to use a selection brush and generative fill  to place that dolphin in the water.  So he’s supposed to look like he’s under the water.

 So I get my selection brush.  And I have my opacity at 100.  And I’’ll, put my hardness at around 50.  And I’m just going to draw this area.  Something like this.  And in generative fill.  I’m going to type. Dolphin. And click generate.  So here’s all the different variations.  Yes, you can see some light  coming from the surface and making some lines on the dolphin.  But he’s a lot crisper than the stingray. doesn’t quite look like he’s underwater.  

So this is where using the selection brush opacity comes in  and is going to make it look a lot more realistic.  So this time I’m going to change the opacity of the selection brush.  And you can play with this to see what works for you.  Let’s say 50.  And I’ll keep my hardness at 30.  You see that selection is a lot lighter now.  And I’ll type in.  Dolphin. And click generate.  So now here is the original dolphin at 100% opacity.  Here is the last dolphin that we just generated at 50% opacity.  

So you can play with the opacity and keep on changing it and keep on  generating it to see how this looks best in your photo, like underwater.  In this case.  But he does blend in a lot better with the opacity of the selection  brush at 50% as compared to 100%. that’s a great usage of the selection brush.  Putting things underwater and having it blend in by using the opacity.  

Adding ice to a cocktail using selection brush and generative fill.

So great use for the Selection Brush tool would be for product photography.  Say you want to put ice cubes in here.  There’s already ice cubes, but they’re just not showing  well enough in this drink.  So I can get my selection brush tool.  I’m going to use hardness about 50%.  and I’m going to leave the opacity at 100% this example.  

So if I just draw in here.  And use generative fill.  In I’m going to type in ice cubes in cocktail.  And click generate and see what happens.  So we’re trying to make the ice cubes look like they’re in the drink.  And they look realistic.  Different variations here.  So just that variation you can see that.  maybe the opacity needs to be brought down.  Because this ice cube looks too defined to be in the drink.  So we’ll do that again.  And this time I’m going to bring my opacity down to 60. 

So you may have to play with this to see what looks best.  But you are going to have to  drop the opacity to some percentage To get this result.  So let’s try this again.  Ice cube in cocktail. 00:04:13:07 – 00:04:13:29 Hit generate.  And see we’re getting garnish or cucumber in there too.  That could be a desired result.  But then here is the ice cubes.  So you can actually mix the selection brush.  And the opacities.  If I come up here and put my opacity to 100 And just paint up here at the top.  Say ice cubes. And say generate.  And see, now that the ice cubes are coming out of the top of the drink.

  So I could do that all at once.  Let’s do that on a next drink.  So I’ll take. The opacity down to. 60%.  Right here I will paint where I want my ice cubes to appear.  And then I can either keep painting over and over  in this area or I can raise the opacity.  And just paint up here.  And again in a generative fill just type in.  Ice cubes in cocktail. And click generate.  And here’s to variations.  So you can see here’s two ice cubes.  And we have.  A cucumber down here in the drink.  And the ice cube up above here coming over the top of the rim of the glass. 

And you can generate again if you don’t like this one.  But that’s the idea.  You want what’s ever in the glass, in the liquid show.  like it is really in liquid in a glass.  And this is a great use for product photography.  How to select subjects and refine edges and blend images in Photoshop. 

We’re going to remove the background of this subject.  And we’re going to put her on this background layer.  We’re not going to worry too much about sizing.  There are a lot of ways to remove the background from a subject. 

We can use the select subject here on the contextual task bar.  We just hit that.  And we can come over here  to the bottom of the layers panel and click and create a layer mask.  And you can still see white around the edges of her hair.  Could do it that way.  or in the contextual toolbar, you can click Remove Background.  And you could still see the edges of her hair.  There’s still some white coming through. 

So we’re going to have to refine the background.  So let’s come up here.  We’ll click on our object selection tool.  Click on Object finder. Subject to selected.  We just click on that. And there we have our selection.  And at the top we can come up to Select and Mask and click on that.  So now already you can see that we have a pretty good selection.  there isn’t too many areas where there is any white showing through.  There’s a little bit.  that method works pretty good.

I have it on. Onion skin.  real time. Refinement is checked.  I’m going to shift the radius just a little bit.  Click on Smart Radius. Also.  Sometimes all you need to do is shift the edge.  If you shift it one way.  can look at the edges and see that.  You may not like that.  You can shift it the other way.  And that looks a little better.  can find your sweet spot. 

And I’m just going to barely shift the edge.  and also if you find that there is some areas where the color  is coming through white, in this case you can come up to the Refine Edge brush.  And just brush in the area that you want refined. 

And then we’re going to output this to a layer mask and say okay.  so far the object selection and the selected mask work the best  to cut out a person and get rid of most of the background color.  If there is any.  So now we need this background to blend in a little bit better.  Usually you would see the background blurry.  And that will help out the composition of the subject a lot more.  for layer zero here I’m going to convert this to a Smart object.  And then I’m going to come up to.  Filter neural filters. 

And we have something over here called depth blur.  Click on the button.  And you can adjust the blur strength.  You can see it in the background. There. To your taste.  I’m going to leave it as it is.  And the output.  Is on Smart Filter. I’m going to say okay. 

So now we blurred the background So now that we have the background  blurred, we’re going to blend the colors in  to have her fit more in the colors of the background.  layer one selected.  Come up to the top to filter.  Neural filters.  And over here we have something called harmonization.  Click on that button.  And click on select a layer.  Click on layer zero. 

And so you can see that now she is blended in with the background layer.  Even better.  So the colors are matching.  And of course you can adjust the strength.  In any of the other colors you would like to.  I’m going to select Smart Filter for the output and say okay.  So now we have the background blurred.  The subject is harmonized with the background layer. 

Using selection brush to select edge of womans hair,

And with layer one selected now we can use the selection brush.  The selection brush should be up here.  It’s under L at the top.  We’re going to click on that.  And we’re going to leave the overlay color at magenta.  We want a soft brush.  Bring down the hardness. Opacity.  We’re going to keep it at around 30  because we want the edges of our hair to blend in with the background.  So it’s going to be soft.  It’s going to be a little out of focus. 

So now as I paint around her hair.  Along the edges with the background.  Something like this.  And hopefully what we’re going to get is we’re going to get the edges of her hair.  Softly blend in with the background.  Now we’re going to use AI I’m going to use generative fill.  And I’m going to type in curly hair and say generate.  And let’s see if this gives us what we want.  So there is option one.  Option to option three. 

If you don’t like those options you can click generate again.  And as we’re going through the options.  I actually like option one.  So very easily we’ve blended that subject into that image.  Let me know in the comments how you’ve used the Selection Brush tool. 

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See my photograph website here ➡️ https://www.charlescabreraphotograph.com

Read the previous blog article here ➡️ How to Select Subjects and Refine Edges in Photoshop | Easily Select, Refine, Blend with Ease