Photoshop is by far one of the most popular photo editing/manipulation software out there. There are hundreds of tools editors can take advantage of and make their images look exactly like they want.
In this article, we’re going over how to select objects or layers in Photoshop. Anything that you see with a black and white blinking line all around it is an active selection in Photoshop, and all the effects you apply and changes you make will affect that particular area only.
Also read: How to sharpen low-resolution images in Photoshop?
Deselecting in Photoshop
Now there are a number of ways you can deselect something on Photoshop.
How to deselect in Photoshop using the Select menu?
To deselect the active selection, click on the Select menu followed by Deselect. Your active selection will now be deselected.
How to deselect in Photoshop using the keyboard shortcut?
Press Ctrl + D on a Windows PC or Cmd + D on a macOS device to deselect the active selection in Photoshop.
How to deselect in Photoshop using the context menu?
You can also right-click anywhere on the canvas and click Deselect to get rid of the active selection. You can also invert the selection from this menu. Inverting the selection will select everything else in the image, excluding the currently active selection.
Also read: What are Blend modes in Photoshop? How are they used?
How to deselect a layer in Photoshop?
If you’d rather deselect an entire layer as compared to individual objects on the canvas, head over to the Layers panel in the bottom right.
You’ll see that the active layer is highlighted in a lighter grey. To deselect the layer, select another layer from the panel or click in the space where there are no layers.
If you’ve selected multiple layers by holding the Ctrl or Cmd key and selecting the layers, simply clicking on the selected layer while holding down the modifier key would deselect the layer you want.
Also read: How to flip a layer in Photoshop?
