Photoshop Tutorial: the lasso tool

The Lasso tool in Photoshop is in the upper left, at the second position of the toolbar. It is in the form of a node. It is used to make a freehand selection.

Photoshop lasso tool helps you easily select portions of an image, to change its color or to remove a portion.

The sub-lasso Tools

With a left click of the mouse, we see three sub-lasso tools:

Lasso tool

Using the lasso tool (selected by default) requires the continuous support on
the mouse to select the object border (here, an orange). We must turn the entire border to join the starting point and thus forming the outline. This use is rather delicate yet practical when the other lasso tool does not provide the desired selection.

Polygonal Lasso Tool

The polygonal lasso tool facilitates the use of the lasso as it allows to place
points that will form straight lines, which is simpler than the lasso tool
by default. However, this tool is reserved for objects with straight edge, so it doesn’t work with images like the example above.

It is still a “free hand” selection, but it works step by step, so it is more useful than the simple lasso.

– Shift: Causes your selection to be an angle of 90 °, 45 °, 0 °, -45 °, -90 °, -135 °, 180 ° and 135 °
– Alt: as long as you keep your lasso tool becomes simple. Very useful for curves.
– Shift: (after a selection is already present): add at the first selection.
– Alt: (after a selection is already present): subtract the first selection.

Magnetic Lasso Tool

The Magnetic Lasso tool remains the favorite tool in our case, because it
automatically selects and accurately the outline of our orange inside an
image (see the tutorial of the magnetic tool in Photoshop).

You noticed that to select the orange in the picture the tool is most
appropriate to the magnetic lasso tool because it allows the automatic
selection of the image border. Thisdoes not mean it is the best tool, if we had to  choose the edge of a window for example the polygonal lasso tool is more appropriate.

Use these buttons to create other effects:
– Control: You can move what you selected
– Shift: (after a selection has already) add to the first selection
– Alt: (after a selection is already present): subtract the first selection