---
url: "/tinyimage/editor-canvas.md"
description: "Select parts of an image with a magic wand, lasso or brush, then paint, erase, fill or adjust them locally in TinyImage."
---

# Selections, brushes & erasing

> Select parts of an image with a magic wand, lasso or brush, then paint, erase, fill or adjust them locally in TinyImage.

The left navigation groups **Tools**, **Adjustments** and **Finishing** in one column, with an icon beside each label and shortcut hints for canvas tools. The active row is highlighted. Choose a tool to show its controls on the right. All painting and selection processing stays on your device.

## Select an area

1. Open an image in **Editor** and choose **Selection** in the left navigation. Use the fixed buttons at the top of the right column to choose **Object detect**, **Magic wand**, **Rectangle selection**, **Ellipse selection**, **Lasso selection** or **Selection brush**.
2. Click with the wand, drag a rectangle or ellipse, draw a closed lasso, or brush over the area. Animated black-and-white marching ants show the selection boundary, including holes, while leaving the image clear. Release the mouse to keep the selection; **Escape** discards an unfinished selection.
3. Use the fixed **New**, **Add**, **Subtract** and **Intersect** buttons to set the selection mode. Hold **Shift** to add, **Alt/Option** to subtract, or **Shift+Alt/Option** to intersect during a gesture. Switching between selection tools retains the selection.
4. Use **Inverse**, **Select all** or **Deselect** as needed. Open **Refine edges**, set **Feather (px)** and choose **Feather selection** to soften the boundary.

The wand samples the visible edited image. **Tolerance** controls how far matching colours may differ from the sampled colour. **Contiguous pixels** limits selection to connected matching pixels; turn it off to select matching colours across the image. **Anti-alias edges** adds soft coverage along nearby colour boundaries. **Sample size** can use a single pixel or a 3 × 3 or 5 × 5 average.

**Object detect** uses the same local foreground model as Remove background. Choose **Select subject** or click the canvas to select the main detected foreground. The first use downloads the model; images stay on your device. It may select multiple subjects together and does not identify every object independently. Refine with the lasso or selection brush. Detection changes only the selection and can be undone or cancelled.

Colour selection works best where the subject and background differ clearly. It does not automatically recognize subjects or guarantee fine hair and fur isolation. Lower the tolerance around detailed boundaries and refine with the lasso or selection brush. **Cancel selection** or **Escape** cancels a wand operation without changing the image or earlier selection.

## Paint, fill or erase

1. Choose **Paint brush** or **Eraser**, then set brush size, hardness and opacity. Choose the foreground colour for painting. **Eyedropper** samples a colour from the visible image and returns to the paint brush.
2. Paint over the image. An active selection limits each stroke; choose **Deselect** to work across the whole image. The brush outline shows its size at the current zoom.
3. To act on the selected area at once, choose **Fill colour** or **Erase selection**. Both use the current opacity.
4. Release the mouse to keep a stroke. Brush pixels save silently in a background queue so the next stroke can start immediately. Undo and export wait for pending saves. If saving fails, the visible stroke remains available to retry. Use **Undo**, **Redo** or **History** to restore strokes and selections. Press **Escape** while drawing to discard the unfinished stroke.

Erasing creates transparency. Download as PNG or WebP to retain it; JPEG uses an opaque background. Painting and erasing edit source pixels before the current colour adjustments, filters and effects. Those controls remain editable. Selection outlines are never included in exports. **Clear pixel edits** in Retouch removes the accumulated painted, erased and repaired pixels; use History to restore an individual step.

The overlapping foreground/background swatches provide two working colours. Press **X** to swap them or **D** to restore black and white while using Paint brush, Fill or Eyedropper. **Alt/Option-click** with Paint brush samples from the visible image without painting. Hardness controls the edge: **0%** is soft and **100%** is hard. Use **Shift+[** and **Shift+]** to decrease or increase hardness.

Open **Brush options** to use **Smoothing** to reduce pointer jitter. **Pen pressure controls size** varies the brush footprint with a supported pen; mouse and touch strokes use the chosen size. The editor uses intermediate pointer samples where the host supports them. Choose **?** in the editor toolbar for a shortcut reference.

After Remove background, enable **Restore removed pixels** in Paint brush to brush missing pixels back from the image before removal. Use Eraser to remove unwanted areas. Restoration is available while the before image matches the current canvas dimensions; crop or resize first only if you no longer need to restore those pixels.

## Refine selection edges

With a selection active, open **Refine edges** and choose **Feather selection** to soften its boundary. Set **Edge adjustment (px)** and choose **Expand** or **Contract** to grow or shrink it. Each action can be undone. The selection brush and lasso can add, subtract or intersect areas. These tools refine the selection; they do not rerun object detection.

Marching ants show a simplified boundary on large or highly fragmented selections to keep navigation responsive. Editing and export still use the full-resolution selection.

## Fill selections or colour regions

Choose **Fill** in the left navigation, or press **G**. Set **Fill colour** and **Opacity**, then click the canvas. If a selection is active, the click fills that selection. Otherwise it fills connected pixels matching the clicked colour. **Tolerance** controls how far colours may differ; **Anti-alias edges** softens nearby boundaries. Colour matching uses the visible edited image, while the filled pixels remain underneath editable adjustments and effects.

Use **Fill selection** to fill the selected area without clicking the canvas. **Fill image** covers the entire image, including transparent pixels. Use Undo to restore a fill. **Cancel fill** or **Escape** cancels connected-region processing without changing the image or selection. Saved projects and exports retain filled pixels.

The Selection panel also provides a colour swatch beside **Fill colour**. Choose the colour before filling the selected pixels. **Erase selection** makes the selected pixels transparent.

## Adjust selected pixels

Choose **Add adjustment** to turn the selection into a local adjustment. Use the right panel to change exposure, brightness, contrast, saturation, blur or sharpening in that area. The editor supports up to eight local adjustments. A highly fragmented selection may be too complex to retain as an editable adjustment; use a smaller selection or paint or fill it directly.

Choose **Local adjustments** in the left navigation to reopen saved adjustments after switching tools. Use **Edit selection** to refine a saved adjustment's area with the canvas tools, then choose **Update adjustment selection**. This retains the adjustment values. Invert and feather controls also remain available in the adjustment panel.

## Navigation and projects

Choose **Hand** to drag the image. Hold **Space** to pan while using another tool. Shortcuts are **H** for hand, **O** for object detection, **W** for wand, **M** for rectangle, **Shift+M** for ellipse, **L** for lasso, **Q** for selection brush, **B** for paint, **G** for fill, **E** for eraser and **I** for eyedropper. Selection buttons show their shortcuts in brackets and remain visible while the controls scroll. **[** and **]** change brush size. With canvas tool controls open, **Cmd/Ctrl+A** selects all, **Cmd/Ctrl+D** deselects, **Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+I** selects the inverse, and **Delete/Backspace** erases a selection.

Saved projects retain painted pixels, transparency, the active selection and local adjustments. Geometry changes such as cropping, resizing or local processing clear the active selection; Undo can restore it. **Reset options** restores tool settings. **Reset all edits** restores the original image after confirmation.

For clone, healing, patch and content-aware repair, see [Retouch](/tinyimage/editor-retouch). For delivery, see [Batch editing & export](/tinyimage/editor-export).