We all know that selecting objects is one of the necessary evils of Photoshop. If there was justice in the world, everything would work with the Magic Wand but sadly that ain’t the case.

There’s no doubt that Photoshop gives you the tools needed to make meticulous selections but let’s face – a lot of the time we just want a quick way of getting the job done. But we still want good results. The eternal dilemma…

As we were creating the flower stamp set, we found ourselves using the Contract command a lot and thought we’d highlight it here in case you had never used it. Don’t get your hopes up – you are not suddenly going to be able to isolate complex subjects with the mere flick of the mouse. But what it does allow you to do is be a bit more free and easy with the selection, and then tidy up at the end. Put simply, the Contract command shrinks your selection, so it cuts into more of the image. This means that any areas where some of the background might have been left can easily be trimmed.

It won’t work with all images, but it’s a great command to have on stand by!

Step 1 – The problem

Here we have our cutout. It was made using the Pen tool, but you can see that we were a leetle bit wibbly in areas. There are bits of dark background left that make themselves all too visible now there is a white background. Not to worry – we can work some magic.

Step 2 – Select again

Chances are you will still have your marching ants happily dancing around, but if you have copied into a new document and deselected, you need to call the selection back. The easiest way of doing this is to Apple-click (Mac) or Ctrl-click (PC) on the thumbnail on the layer with your selection. Ta da! The marching ants will return!

Step 3 – Modify your selection

Go up to the Select menu, scoot down to Modify and then zip across to Contract.

Step 4 – Add a measurement

In the dialog that appears, enter an amount in pixels. This will be how much the selection outline will shrink by. If you aren’t sure, start small. You can always repeat the process. Click OK when you are done.

Step 5 – Inverse

You’ll see the marching ants shimmy in, leaving behind a border of your previous selection. DO NOT press delete yet. If you do, your image will disappear! Instead, you need to invert the selection. To do this, go to the Select menu and pick Inverse. Now press delete. You should be left with a much tidier selection.