Multiple selects in Photoshop

Hello Everybody,

I have currently encountered a problem in learning photoshop; is there any way to make multiple selects in photoshop. I want to mask the petals of a flower pic using photoshop. But when I select the petals from the background, the stigma was also selected and thus any effect apply to petals will also apply to the stigma which I really don't want to!

I tried to rule out the stigma by also selecting it at the same time using the shift key and then tried to inverse select to exclude the stigma leaving just the petals. Problem happened that once I finished select the stigma and dbclick, the selection of stigma gone and brought me back to select the whole flower! Is there any way to do that trick or there is a more easy way to handle this? Pls give any suggestion! Many thanks in advance.


Best regards


New Comer

If the petals are roughly the same color you can select by color range (Select > Color Range...). Use the add to selection tool (the eyedropper with the plus next to it) and adjust the fuzziness slider to get more or less the area you want.

There have been many times, though, when there's been no way to select what I want to except by using the polygonal lasso and just going around the area, one click at a time. It takes a while, especially when the area is complex, but sometimes there's just no other way.

Oh, one more thing: You do know that when using any of the selection tools (marquee, wand, lasso), you can add to the selection by holding down shift and subtract from it by holding down Option (Alt on a PC).

Good luck!

Hello Musffern,


Many thanks for sharing your valuable experience and advices!



Best regards



New Comer

Many thanks Musffern, it works!



New Comer