Photoshop Quick Selection Tool

Okay.... I am sorry, this is really dumb, but I have wasted enough time on this. On one computer when I select my selection tool I have a circle with a + inside or - whichever I choose to select or deselect an object. BUT, on my other computer I have a large crosshair type thing and I can't tell whether I am selecting or deselecting... what the heck is going on!!?!
Please, I know its stupid but please help!

The Caps Lock key alternates between showing you a Precise cursor or normal cursor. Could this be the issue?
There's also a setting in the preferences to allow you to select which you prefer.
-Noel

Similar Messages

I'm trying to use the quick selection tool in Photoshop Elements 12 but it keeps getting stuck on minus. How do I fix this?

I'm trying to use the quick selection tool in Photoshop Elements 12 but it keeps getting stuck on minus. I've reinstalled twice and it will work for a little while and then get stuck again. When I select something, I have one shot at it and as soon as I let go of the mouse it switches to minus and I can't add anything else. How do I fix this?

When a tool misbehaves, go over to the far upper right corner of the tool options area and click the four-lined square. Choose Reset Tool from the popout menu.

Photoshop Crashes after quick selection tool

Did the 14.2 update today and since then i have been unable to use the quick selection tool, followed by quick mask. The PC Crashes.
Photoshop CC has worked perfectly until now
Please help, I am on a deadline for images for an online website, I so wish I had not updated
Image below shows quick mask, the selection was the top right above the frogs eye, but look at the red mask, also Task manager shown(it says Photoshop not responding)
This was the sequence of events if it helps
The Pc was working from a clean reboot.
I opened Photoshop
Opened an image off the camera
cropped to 1000px wide (72 dpi)
Quick selection
Quick mask
This is the result (happened 5 times to date so going for a coffee in the hope someone has a solution soon!)
Many thanks

I have reproduced it myself on one occasion, though it did not lock Photoshop up for me. It's been reported to Adobe.
There may be some connection to the zoom level. Out of curiosity, are you using Scrubby Zoom?
It might be prudent to try configuring Photoshop to use either the "Normal" or "Basic" drawing mode instead of "Advanced", though it is of course a bit difficult to know right away whether the problem has been worked-around.
-Noel
P.S., you said "The PC crashes"... Are you speaking of something beyond the Photoshop application locking up as you have shown above? An application locking up isn't the same as a system crash.

Photoshop CS6 - Quick Selection tool freezes Photoshop/ becomes unresponsive for minutes

After only two selections the tool becomes unresponsive for minutes.
I'm on a 2.6 Ghz retina MacBook Pro, 16 Gb RAM, and this in connection with an SSD should make this tool very good to use. Operating system: OS X 10.8 "Mountain Lion", latest update.
Unfortunately, it seems to develop some kind of overload, during which you cannot use Photoshop at all. No commands like "undo selection", "quit", "close file" are accepted.
There is no beachball, no other signs that Photoshop is working on something.
Hint: it seems to happen when you option select (subtract from an existing selection).
Hint: the freeze can be shortened by a tool switch (has to be through clicking on a tool, keyboard commands are frozen as well)
Hint: the "subtract selection" move that caused the freeze appears after Photoshop comes back to life after a couple of minutes. The subtraction to the selection seems to be random, makes no sense, and is not the regular function of the tool.
First step after this freeze would be to undo the last selection, and continue working.
If you do several "add to selection" moves, they add up in a kind of waiting line. If you do the subtract from selection move, this doesn't work, and the freeze happens.
So far, I have not noticed the freeze when adding to a selection. Adding to a selection was always quick and instant. The bug must sit in the "subtract from selection" code.
On most freezes, the ants continue walking, I just had one (again with subtracting selection) where even the ants stopped walking.
I don't think it has anything to do with Photoshop working. I have used the quick selection tool regularly under CS5 on my old machine (which was a museum piece), and while I had to wait sometimes, it was never ground to a freeze/halt like the quick selection tool under CS6.

Did this work before, or has it always been this way? Not a bug or everyone with your system would be complaining. Have not seen that.
If it has always worked that way a reset of preferences will probably not do anything.
A reset of preferences will reset to factory defaults, so you will have to reset to saved workspace.
Do you have at least 10% free disk space?

When I use the quick selection tool in Photoshop CS6 my monitor flickers

When I use the quick selection tool my monitor starts flickering what do I need to change in my set up.

I'm sorry Jeff I know better. I'm using Adobe CS6 and running Window 8.0 operating system. Thanks for your help. I also run Adobe photoshop element 11 on the same system with no problems
<Removed by Moderator>

Why my quick selection tool on photoshop is slow on my mac

why my quick selection tool on photoshop is slow on my mac

BOILERPLATE TEXT:
Note that this is boilerplate text.
If you give complete and detailed information about your setup and the issue at hand,
such as:
exact versions of your OS, of Photoshop (not just "CS6", but something like CS6v.13.0.6) and of Bridge,
your settings in Photoshop > Preference > Performance
the type of file you were working on,
machine specs, such as total installed RAM, scratch file HDs, total available HD space, video card specs, including total VRAM installed,
what troubleshooting steps you have taken so far,
what error message(s) you receive,
if having issues opening raw files also the exact camera make and model that generated them,
if you're having printing issues, indicate the exact make and model of your printer, paper size, image dimensions in pixels (so many pixels wide by so many pixels high). if going through a RIP, specify that too.
A screen shot of your settings or of the image could be very helpful too,
etc.,
someone may be able to help you (not necessarily this poster, who is not a Windows user).
Please read this FAQ for advice on how to ask your questions correctly for quicker and better answers:
http://forums.adobe.com/thread/419981?tstart=0
Thanks!

I have a comment. I am very upset with Photoshop and all your tutorials regarding the quick select tool. I have watched many tutorials and read instructions until I am blue in the face. This tool does not work. It is all over the place and all of your

I have a comment. I am very upset with Photoshop and all your tutorials regarding the quick select tool. I have watched many tutorials and read instructions until I am blue in the face. This tool does not work. It is all over the place and all of your tutorials make it look so simple. How can you advertise this as a viable tool when it just doesn't work?

It is all over the place and all of your tutorials make it look so simple.
This is a user to user Forum, so you are not really addressing Adobe here, even though some Adobe employees thankfully have been dropping by.
How can you advertise this as a viable tool when it just doesn't work?
Concluding something does not work because you fail at using it is not necessarily always justified.
The Quick Selection Tool certainly has limitations, but your post seems to be more about venting than trouble-shooting – otherwise you might have posted an image where you failed to get an expected result.

Photoshop freezes when I use quick selection tool

So every time i use the quick selection tool, on any image in photoshop I get a loading symbol and then I have to force quit the application. This only recently started happening and I have had the application for a few months.
Thanks

Photoshop Elements doesn't respond when you use editing tools in Mac OS X 10.10

The quick selection tool is freezing Photoshop CC.

Anyone else had this problem? Everything else seems to work fine but when I try to use the quick selection tool, Photoshop freezes and I have to shut it down. I can't find much online about this.
I'm on a Mac
Processor 2.3 GHz Intel Core i5
Memory 4 GB 1333 MHz DDR3
Graphics Intel HD Graphics 3000 384 MB
Software Mac OS X Lion 10.7.5 (11G63)

Does turning off »Use Graphics Processor« in the Performance Preferences and restarting Photoshop have any bearing on the issue?
What have you done for general trouble-shooting so far?
Photoshop: Basic Troubleshooting steps to fix most issues

Quick select tool doesn't work in photoshop CS5 extended

I can't get the quick selection tool to work in CS5 it does in CS4 does anyone have an answer for this?

I can capture the image in CS4 and wallah the back ground is gone...here in CS5 I have to had draw it (which I did just rapidly for this example) then I go to refine edge get the black screen with white outlines...or using the background screen image I just get the blank background with a light outline of the image ...????

Photoshop 14.2 update quick selection tool issues

Hi there,
many strange and frustrating issues on selections with the quick selection tool after the last update. As you can see in the image when you release the selection the software shows strage pattern and it is impossible to manage the selections in any way. Very annoying. Could you suggest a very fast fix of this issue? Anyone has the same issues?

I'm using a MacBookPro late 2011, could be a problem with the motherboard. I noticed many late 2011 users have the same problems. So the possible solution is to restart the Mac and try to avoid the overheating. I think the Adobe update is not involved in this issue.

Why is the "Quick Selection Tool" working so slowly? - Photoshop CC in Windows 7

Every time I try to use the Quick selection tool, it takes a REALLY long time to select. I had CS5 and it was super fast, even with large RAW files. Now with CC, it takes at least 20 minutes to select a person out of a photo.
I already tried "resetting" the tool - that did not work at all.
Please help!

I mentioned working on my laptop without GPU acceleration, and how much it slowed everything down, but Quick Select was still laggy after the driver updated and GPU acceleration restored. This is a reasonable laptop with i7, 16Gb and GTX680. Thankfully, I got my main system back yesterday, and Quick select is pretty much instant.
But there shouldn't be that much difference. The big box has six core running at 4.2Ghz (under load) 32GB and GTX570, so while it is certainly more powerful, the difference in performance in respect to Quick Select is not proportional. I've just tried reducing cache levels on the big box from the '6' it usually runs at right down to 2, but it still responds instantly even with large files. I have GPU set to Advanced, and tile size to 128 on both systems.
Another odd thing is that I only have 1GB vRAM with the GTX570, where the GTX680 has 4Gb of faster vRAM. But maybe Quick select is not a big user of GPU acceleration.
So no real help I am afraid. I have looked through the GPU FAQ, but nothing helpful there. OK, I have just found a more detailed article on GPU acceleration, and it mentions a lot of features, but not Quick Select, so it could be that GPU is irrelevant. The laptop is Windows 8.1 as opposed win 7 for the big box, if that makes a difference. Can you correlate anything between our systems? I hate to post this without any suggestions, but I'm stumped.
There are tricks to aid Quick select.
Make a copy of the layer, and apply Curves and/or Levels directly to the layer, and try to increase contrast between the subject and background. Use this layer to make the selection, then switch back to the normal layer to use the selection.
I don’t know if this will work as I have just thought of it. Copy the layer, and Free Transform it to a smaller size. It will be image dependant, but Quick Select is much faster with images below about 1500 pixels wide. Use Quick select on the smaller image layer, and copy the selection to a new layer. FT it back up to size, and it should fit. This would only be useful if you are going to use Refine Edge right after, and will have obvious limitations.
Make sure you report back if you find a solution.

Magic Quick Selection Tool NOT working right. Help please?

We've used the magic quick selection tool lots and most of the time it works well.
It's very slow.............. v e r y slow and I'm wondering if there's a patch to download from Adobe or
what to do to fix this. We have pictures to edit and it's making the editing torture. Please help?
Thank you so much. tkccvalentine

It's the Quick Selection Tool in Photoshop Elements 9 and I'm trying to get the background and make it another layer so I can even out the color of the background then bring down the transparency. Not sure if that makes sense. I'm new to this.... Sometimes the area it will grab can go ...not fast.. but not slow. Sometimes it's like it's just messed up and literally takes 30 seconds to process each move. I rebooted my computer and re opened it and it helped a little. It's not clear what causes it when it messes up and when it doesn't. Just frustrating. It's probably user error because I'm so new at Photoshop. Thanks for your input. I really appreciate it.

Quick Selection Tool doesn't work

This has probably been addressed, but can't seem to find it. It's driving me nuts.
In Elements 6.0, I have found the Quick Selection Tool quite useful. However, I often find that it does not work; not creating an outlined selection.
Have others found this? Do I have some setting incorrect? Is this an Adobe bug? I have reverted to all default settings, but no dice.
Thanks!

Ya, I can't make it work. I've watched a million videos online with people that seem to think it's amazing, but I have spent HOURS trying to cut out a simple image that would have taken me ten seconds on my ancient CS2. After owning this new product for two months I am still opening up my old version of Photoshop to extract images. Every time I start outlining something, the Quick Selection Tool goes all over the place, and when I do finally get it somewhat close to outlining what I want, I can't figure out how to save what I want. Lame.

Quick selection tool always contains minus sign

I am obviously not a very experienced Photoshop user and I have a question about the Quick Selection tool. I am using CS6 on a Mac with OS X 10.9 Mavericks.
I watched a couple tutorials and my system is behaving differently. In the tutorials I watched, when the quick selection tool is chosen the "brush" contains a plus sign. If too much area is selected, that can be corrected by holding the option/alt key and this changes the brush to a minus sign. On my computer, when I select the tool the brush always contains a minus sign. I think the tool is working OK but I wonder why I never see the plus sign inside the brush.
Please advise.
Thank you.

Be sure the tool isn't set to subtract in the options bar. Otherwise, try resetting the tool by right- or control-clicking the blue arrow just to the right of the tool preset (under the blue PS icon in the below screenshot) to reset the tool.

Photoshop Quick Selection Tool

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