How to Deselect in Photoshop

Selection tools are powerful and can open you a window of opportunities when it comes to editing any kind of image or artwork. Though making a selection is a pretty straightforward action, you could find yourself confused if you need to deselect that same selection you made. I’ll show you how to deselect in Photoshop, and how to reselect that same part again.

Let’s start first with how to deselect.

How to deselect in Photoshop

First, check that the current selection is active. You’ll recognize the active selection box by a selection surrounded with short, dashed lines that are commonly called “marching ants”.

How to deselect everything

How to deselect part of the selection

If you only want to deselect part of the selection, then we are talking about subtracting part of the selection. You can subtract part of the selection by using any selection tool. 

To deselect only part of the selection, hold down the Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac) key and then select the area you want to subtract from the original selection. You can also click on the Subtract from selection icon in the upper bar menu to achieve the same thing.

The selection bounds should now contain only the part that was excluded while marking what should be subtracted.

HINT - After you choose any selection tool, you can find four different selection options in the upper bar menu: New selection, Add to selection, Subtract from selection, Intersect with selection options.

Each selection tool will behave differently when you subtract the selection. For example, the Rectangular Marquee tool will subtract a rectangular shape, while the Magic Wand tool and Quick Selection tool will automatically subtract areas that are snapped to image edges.

How to hide selection

Maybe the selection just distracts you so you want to hide it? If that’s the case, then hit the CTRL+H (Windows) or Command+H (Mac) to hide the selection. When you want it back, hit the same keyboard shortcut again.

How to reselect in Photoshop

What if you accidentally deselected and now need to recover lost selection? Photoshop has the functionality to reselect too.

Photoshop selection tools

Selection may appear on screen in a variety of different forms. It depends on what was the goal to select, and which selection tool you used for that. Here you can find a quick overview of some of the most commonly used selection tools:

• Marquee tools – Adobe guide
  • Rectangular Marquee Tool – the most basic selection tool that you can use to select rectangular parts of the image.
  • Elliptical Marquee Tool – another basic selection tool that you can use to select elliptical parts of the image.
• Lasso tools – Adobe guide
  • Lasso Tool – use it when you need to draw selection by hand.
  • Polygonal Lasso Tool – similar to Lasso Tool, but you should use it when you need more control in drawing polygonal shapes. It created straight-edged selections.
  • Magnetic Lasso Tool – use it when you need assistance in making a selection. It helps by snapping the selection line to image edges.
• Quick Selection tools – Adobe guide
  • Object Selection Tool – selection tool that automatically finds and selects an object inside a defined region.
  • Quick Selection Tool – brush-like selection tool that makes a selection by finding and following the edges in an image.
  • Magic Wand Tool – selects similarly colored Image areas.

Conclusion

You should now have a solid understanding of how to deselect in Photoshop using different selection tools. In my opinion, the quickest way to deselect is by using keyboard shortcuts – CTRL+D for Windows or Command+D for Mac. Also, I showed you an elegant technique of how you can deselect only part of the whole selection.

See you next time!