The Quick Selection Tool

Although the Lasso tool works well, the quick selection tool is a sophisticated, practically intelligent tool that selects areas of a photo within the same tonal range. As with the Clone Stamp tool (discussed in a previous post), when you click on this tool another menu across the top opens that lets you adjust the tool size, as well as to go back and forth between expanding the selection area, making it smaller, or adding a new selection area (see below).

In the above image, taken of my Taiwanese friend Meiu when I was a GI in Germany, I selected the painting on the left as well as the full shape of her body and the paint pots to the right, because I wanted to brighten just these areas of the photo to add a bit of a "glow" to the lighting. The image below shows the final results.