How to Use the Object Selection Tool in Photoshop

How to Use the Object Selection Tool in Photoshop

Select Subject gives you the whole person. Most retouching does not want the whole person — it wants the hair, or the eyes, or one garment, and getting to those individually has always meant building the selection by hand.

The Object Selection Tool now identifies those parts for you. Hover over a portrait and Photoshop offers the hair, the eyebrows, the eyes, the pupils, the shirt, each as a separate selectable object.

A note on versions: this was recorded when the feature was available in the Photoshop beta. It may now be in the main release, and the options may have expanded since. The workflow is unchanged.

Where to Find It

The Object Selection Tool sits directly above the Magic Wand in the toolbar, grouped with the Quick Selection Tool.

With it active, look for the Select People option in the options bar. That is what switches the tool from general object detection into the person-aware mode described here.

The Workflow

1. Choose the Object Selection Tool and click Select People

   Photoshop analyzes the image and identifies the people in it, along with their individual features.

2. Hover to preview

   Moving over the image highlights whatever part sits under the cursor — hair, an eye, a garment. This is the fastest way to see what it has actually detected.

3. Click the parts you want

   Click to add each element to your selection. Use Show More to reveal additional detected regions if what you want is not listed.

4. Click Apply

   This converts the highlighted parts into a live selection.

5. Add an adjustment layer

   With the selection active, create a Curves, Hue/Saturation, Vibrance or Exposure layer — the selection becomes its mask automatically.

That last step is what makes this worth using. You go from opening the image to having a masked adjustment layer targeting exactly one feature in about four clicks, with no brushwork at all.

What It Can Detect

On a portrait, the tool typically offers the whole person, the hair, the eyebrows, the eyes, the pupils, the lips and individual items of clothing separately.

The eye detail is more useful than it first appears. Being handed the pupils as their own selection means brightening or shifting eye color becomes a two-second job — and that is one of the most common small portrait adjustments there is.

It also handles multiple people in a frame, identifying each separately, so you can adjust one person’s clothing without touching anyone else’s.

It Over-Selects, and That Is Fine

Being straightforward about the limitation: the detection is good but not exact. Selecting eyes frequently pulls in some eyelid; hair selections sometimes take a little background with them.

The fix takes seconds, and it is worth building the habit rather than expecting perfection.

1. Click the adjustment layer’s mask

   You are editing the mask, not the image.

2. Press B for the Brush Tool

   A soft brush at moderate opacity works best.

3. Paint black over the areas that should not be affected

   Black conceals. Paint white to bring an area back if you overshoot.

Because the adjustment is already live, you can see exactly what you are correcting as you paint — far easier than judging a selection in the abstract before applying it.

Check the mask itself

Hold Alt or Option and click the mask thumbnail to view it full size in the document. Problems that are invisible in the composite are obvious in black and white, particularly around hair.

Where This Genuinely Helps

Eye work. Brightening the whites, lifting the iris, adding a little contrast to the pupils. Previously fiddly, now essentially automatic.

Hair adjustments. Warming or cooling hair color, or adding contrast to it without affecting skin, is a standard portrait move that used to require a careful mask.

Clothing. Shifting the color or saturation of a single garment — useful for toning down a distracting shirt, or matching wardrobe across a set of images.

Group shots. Adjusting one person’s exposure when they fell into shadow, without touching the rest of the frame.

How It Fits With the Other Selection Tools

This does not replace anything — it fills a gap. Select Subject is still the right first move for a full cutout. The Pen Tool is still the answer for hard-edged products. Channels still handle soft edges and fine hair detail better than anything automatic.

What the Object Selection Tool covers is the middle ground that used to be tedious: a specific part of a person, wanted quickly, where the mask only needs to be good rather than perfect. Most local portrait adjustments fall into exactly that category.

The practical habit worth adopting is to reach for it first on any portrait adjustment, and fall back to manual masking only when the result is not clean enough. More often than not, four clicks and a moment of brushwork gets you there.

Quick Reference: Keys, Menus and Settings

• Object Selection ToolW, in the toolbar above the Magic Wand
• Pick parts from a listSelect People > click the person > click Hair, Eyes, Pupil (Show more for the rest) > Apply
• Adjust the selectionLayer > New Adjustment Layer > Vibrance; the selection becomes the layer mask
• Or hover and clickHover over the person, click the highlighted part, then Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Curves
• Clean up the maskB, paint black on the mask where the selection spilled over
• One person’s clothingClick the garment, then Hue/Saturation (drag Hue) or Exposure