Photoshop Selection Guide Masterclass

With the rectangular selection tool, you can isolate a boxed area of your photo to make edits to only that space. The magnetic selection tool lets you define a more specific area. But David prefers the magic wand tool. With a simple click, this tool can isolate the color tones, highlights or shadows. You can then use the edit sliders to adjust the isolated color tones. David shows you this technique with his photo of forested mountaintops.

In nature images, you want adjustments to vary through hard and soft edges, for example a jagged mountaintop versus a soft sky pillowed with clouds. To solve this problem David creates a luminosity mask, which combines the hard and soft edges. A final curves adjustment does the trick.