Adobe® Photoshop® CS2 Studio Techniques

Magnetic Lasso Tool

Whereas the Lasso and Polygonal Lasso tools are relatively straightforward, the Magnetic Lasso tool has a bunch of neat tricks up its sleeve. This tool can be a huge timesaver in that it allows you to trace around the edge of an object without having to be overly precise. You don't have to break a sweat making all of those tiny, painstaking movements with your mouse. Instead, you can make big sloppy selections, and the Magnetic Lasso will do the fine-tuning for you (you don't even have to hold down the mouse button). What's more, if it doesn't do a great job in certain areas, you can hold down Option (Mac) or Alt (Windows) to temporarily access the freeform Lasso tool. However, before using the Magnetic Lasso tool, you'll ...