The Object Selection tool was first introduced in Photoshop CC 2020 (November 2019), but in the latest release (Photoshop CC 2023, version 24 released in October 2022) Adobe have added another new feature called Delete and Fill Selection.
The Object Selection tool is found on the toolbar under the same icon as the Quick Selection tool and the Magic Wand tool (see Figure 1).
Fig 1 - The Object Selection Tool
With the Object Finder option checked in the Options Bar (see Figure 1) the Object Selection tool will highlight objects when the mouse is hovered over them, then clicking the mouse will cause the highlighted object to be selected (see Figure 2a and 2b).
Fig 2 - Using the Object Selection Tool with Delete and Fill Selection
Note that if the Processing spinner icon in the Options Bar (see Figure 1) is spinning it indicates that Photoshop is analysing the objects in the image and you will need to wait until it stops spinning to use the Object Selection Tool.
Once you have used the Object Selection Tool to select an object you can quickly remove it by invoking the new Delete and Fill Selection functionality by using the [Shift+Delete] (Mac) or [Shift+Backspace] (Windows) hotkey.
The above hotkeys will only invoke the Delete and Fill Selection functionality when used after a selection has been made with the Object Selection Tool. When the selection has been made with any other tool the hotkey will invoke the standard Edit Fill dialog as it always has. You can invoke the new functionality by right-clicking the selection and choosing Delete and Fill Selection from the context-sensitive menu (see Figure 3).
Fig 3 - Right-click menu
My testing has shown also that the new functionality is only invoked by the hotkey when the document has a single layer, so if you have multiple layers, you’ll need to use the right-click menu even when you have used the Object Selection tool to make the selection. My testing is on an Apple Mac, so I’ve no idea if this also occurs on Windows, or if it will be “fixed” in future versions.
This new function will do a good job of removing the selected object and filling the area (see Figure 4). Often when using other tools to remove objects you will get noticeable fringes or edges around the object. The new Delete and Fill Selection functionality does a much better job, I suspect what it is doing is intelligently expanding the selection before doing a content-aware fill. Refer to Figure 4 to see a comparison of the Delete and Fill Selection with the Content-aware Workspace – the new method has done a much better job with none of the visible edges created by the Content-aware Workspace tool.
Fig 4 - Results comparison
The selection and content-aware fill tools are getting better and better with every version of Photoshop.
This article was first published in the January 2023 issue of Artists Down Under magazine.