Photoshop Selection Shortcuts
Selections are the foundation of nearly everything non-trivial you do in Photoshop — masking, compositing, targeted color correction, isolated retouching — and the shortcuts here cover both creating selections and the modifier-key conventions that combine, subtract, and refine them. Beyond the core selection and combination shortcuts, Photoshop also lets you restore a recently cleared selection, reshape an existing selection's boundary without touching pixel data, and visually verify exactly what's selected before committing to an edit.
| Action | Windows | Mac | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Deselect current selection | Ctrl+D | Cmd+D | Clears any active selection (marching ants), returning editing operations to apply to the whole layer instead of a constrained region. |
| Select all | Ctrl+A | Cmd+A | Selects the entire canvas area of the active layer, commonly used before copying a full layer's content. |
| Invert selection | Ctrl+Shift+I | Cmd+Shift+I | Swaps the selection boundary so what was outside becomes selected and what was inside becomes deselected, the routine move after isolating a subject when what you actually need to edit is the background around it. |
| Feather selection | Shift+F6 | Shift+F6 | Opens a dialog to soften the selection edge by a specified pixel radius, preventing hard, visible cutoff lines when the selection is used for a mask or composite. |
| Add to existing selection | Hold Shift while selecting | Hold Shift while selecting | Hold Shift before dragging out a new selection with any selection tool and it merges into whatever's already selected rather than starting over from scratch. |
| Subtract from existing selection | Hold Alt while selecting | Hold Option while selecting | Removes the newly drawn area from the current selection, useful for carving an unwanted region (like a small hole) out of a larger selected shape. |
| Reselect last selection | Ctrl+Shift+D | Cmd+Shift+D | Restores the most recently deselected selection exactly as it was, useful when you deselected to check an image's overall appearance without a selection border in the way, then need to continue editing within that exact same selected region afterward. |
| Transform selection | Select > Transform Selection, no default key | Same | Lets you scale, rotate, or reposition the boundary of an active selection itself, without affecting any actual pixel content, useful for adjusting a selection's shape or size after the fact rather than redrawing it from scratch. |
| Toggle Quick Mask mode | Q | Q | Toggles Quick Mask mode, tinting everything outside the current selection in translucent red so you can see the selection boundary at a glance rather than relying on marching ants alone — handy right after an inversion or a complex multi-step selection to confirm the result before running a destructive edit. |
Ctrl+A (Cmd+A) selects the entire canvas of the active layer, and Ctrl+D (Cmd+D) clears any active selection entirely, returning subsequent edits to apply across the whole layer unconstrained. These two are the most basic selection commands and worth having completely automatic, and a lingering active selection you forgot about is a frequent cause of the classic 'why didn't my edit apply where I expected' head-scratcher.
The modifier-key conventions for combining selections are consistent across nearly every selection tool: holding Shift while drawing a new selection area adds it to whatever's currently selected (union), while holding Alt (Option on Mac) subtracts the new area instead. This means you can build up a complex selection from several simple shapes — select a rough rectangle, Shift-drag to add an additional region, Alt-drag to carve out an unwanted bite from the result — without ever needing a single perfectly precise selection tool for an irregular shape. Holding both Shift and Alt together typically intersects the new area with the existing selection instead, keeping only the overlapping region.
Ctrl+Shift+I (Cmd+Shift+I) inverts the current selection, swapping what's selected and what isn't. This is used constantly in a specific workflow pattern: it's often easier to precisely select a simple subject (a product, a person against a busy background) than to precisely select the messy background around it, so the standard move is to select the subject cleanly, invert the selection, and now you have the background selected for whatever background-specific edit you actually needed to make.
Feathering (Shift+F6) softens a selection's edge by blurring the boundary over a specified pixel radius rather than leaving it perfectly hard-edged. This matters most when a selection is being used to mask in new content or apply a localized adjustment — a hard-edged selection often produces a visible, unnatural cutoff line in the final composite, while a feathered edge blends more naturally, though too much feathering on a small selection can make the edit look soft and imprecise rather than intentionally blended.
Reselect (Ctrl+Shift+D / Cmd+Shift+D) restores the most recently cleared selection exactly as it was before you deselected it — a small but genuinely useful shortcut for a common workflow: deselect temporarily to view an image without a distracting selection border, confirm the edit looks right, then reselect the exact same region to continue further targeted work rather than needing to recreate that selection from scratch.
Transform Selection lets you scale, rotate, or reposition a selection's boundary itself, entirely independent of any actual pixel content — useful when a selection's overall shape is right but its size or position needs adjusting, letting you refine the boundary directly rather than redrawing an entirely new selection or resorting to manually adding and subtracting small corrective regions around the edges.
Quick Mask mode (Q) provides a genuinely useful visual sanity check for anyone working with a complex or inverted selection: toggling it on tints every unselected pixel with a translucent red overlay, making the exact boundary between selected and unselected area immediately and unambiguously visible, which is considerably easier to interpret at a glance than trying to trace faint marching-ants dashes around an intricate or partially obscured selection edge.