Member lesson

Selections and cutouts that hold up

Lesson 3 of 8 in Photoshop, the basics.

Checked against the makers' documentation on 9 October 2026.

How to Use Selection Tools | Photoshop Tutorial for Beginners | Adobe Photoshop · Adobe Photoshop

Lesson

A selection tells Photoshop where an edit is allowed to happen, and it shows as a moving dashed border. Ctrl-D, or Command-D on a Mac, clears it. Almost everything in Photoshop starts from one. Adobe's own table for its AI tools shows this. With part of the image selected the Contextual Task Bar offers Generative Fill for that area alone, and with nothing selected it offers Prompt to edit, which changes the whole picture.

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Question 1, locked
Why is No. 4's amber glass bottle a hard case for an automatic selection?
- Amber is outside the colours Select Subject can detect
- Light passes through the glass, so where it ends is a guess
- Bottles are too small for the Object Selection tool to find
- Phone photographs of glass are always out of focus
Question 2, locked
You are on a single app plan with 25 credits a month. What does one use of Enhance edge cost?
- Nothing, like the Remove tool
- 1 credit, like a standard fill
- 5 credits, like Harmonize
- 20 credits, most of the month's allowance
Question 3, locked
According to the lesson, when does a hard-edged product deserve a path drawn with the Pen tool?
- When it will be printed large or reused across a whole range
- Whenever Select Subject is available in the Options bar
- Only when the background is a single plain colour
- Never, since Select and Mask has replaced the Pen tool

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