Select artwork

This guide covers the ways to select artwork beyond a click or a marquee with the Selection tool: the Group Selection, Lasso, Magic Wand and Enclosing Lasso tools, the commands in the Select menu, Global Edit, saved selections and the Select by Artboards plug-in.

Select with the Group Selection tool

The Group Selection tool selects an object inside a group without ungrouping it, and then selects the groups that hold it, one level at a time. It shares a slot in the Tools panel with the Direct Selection tool and has no shortcut.

Press and hold the Direct Selection tool’s button in the Tools panel, then choose the Group Selection tool.
Click an object inside a group. Only that object is selected.
Click the same object again. The group that holds it is added to the selection.
Keep clicking to add the next group up each time.

The night market scene at 150% zoom with the Group Selection tool chosen. After two clicks on the middle amber lantern, every part of the lantern’s group, from the string to the tassel, shows cyan outlines and anchor points. The Properties panel reads 2 Objects

Shift-click a selected object to deselect it.

When you drag a marquee with the Group Selection tool, it selects the anchor points inside the marquee, as the Direct Selection tool does. Press E during the drag to select only the objects that lie entirely inside the marquee, each as a whole object. Press E again to return to selecting anchor points.

Draw around objects with the Lasso

The Lasso tool selects the anchor points inside a freehand loop that you draw. In the default Tools panel, the Lasso shares a slot with the Magic Wand tool, and the Lasso is the button shown.

Press Q to choose the Lasso tool.
Drag a loop around the anchor points you want. A dashed line follows the pointer.
Release the mouse button. The anchor points inside the loop are selected, and the paths they belong to show their anchor points.

The Lasso also picks the gradient mesh points inside the loop and selects the meshes they belong to. To add anchor points to the selection, hold Shift as you drag. To remove them, hold Alt (Option on macOS). Press Esc during the drag to cancel the loop. A click or a very short drag without Shift or Alt deselects everything. The Lasso does not select anchor points on hidden or locked objects.

The lantern string of the night market at 300% zoom, where the string’s anchor points at the two left lanterns are selected and drawn as solid yellow squares with their direction handles. A dashed Lasso loop runs most of the way around the anchor point at the right lantern, which is not selected yet

Select by color and stroke with the Magic Wand

The Magic Wand tool selects every object that looks like the one you click: by default, every object with a similar fill color.

Press and hold the Lasso tool’s button in the Tools panel and choose the Magic Wand tool. Double-click the Magic Wand tool, or choose Window → Magic Wand, to open the Magic Wand panel.
Turn on the attributes to compare and set a tolerance for each.
Press Y to choose the Magic Wand tool, then click an object.

Every visible, unlocked object that matches on all the attributes you turned on is selected, including objects inside groups. Hold Shift as you click to add the matches to the selection, or Alt (Option on macOS) to remove them. Click an empty part of the canvas without Shift or Alt to deselect everything.

The night market scene at 110% zoom with eight lanterns on a string, where the Magic Wand tool has selected the bodies of the five amber lanterns, each outlined in dark blue with large dark blue anchor points, and left the three yellow ones unselected. The Magic Wand panel below the Properties panel has Fill Color turned on with a Tolerance of 20, and the Properties panel reads 5 Objects

In the image, Fill Color has a Tolerance of 20. The yellow lanterns are too far from amber to match, so the click on one amber lantern selects only the bodies of the five amber ones.

Option	Default	What it compares
Fill Color	On, Tolerance 32	The fill color. The Tolerance is a distance between RGB colors, from 0 to 255
Stroke Color	Off, Tolerance 32	The stroke color. The Tolerance runs from 0 to 255
Stroke Weight	Off, Tolerance 5 pt	The stroke weight. The Tolerance runs from 0 to 1000 pt
Opacity	Off, Tolerance 5%	The opacity. The Tolerance runs from 0 to 100%
Blending Mode	Off	The blending mode, which must be the same

A Tolerance of 0 matches only the exact color. Gradients and patterns match only when they are identical. The settings stay as you set them when you switch tools.

The panel menu has Hide Stroke Options and Hide Transparency Options, which hide those rows (choose Show Stroke Options or Show Transparency Options to bring them back), and Reset, which restores the defaults.

Select only what is fully inside with the Enclosing Lasso

The Enclosing Lasso tool is a built-in plug-in. Like the Lasso, it draws a freehand loop, but it selects whole objects, and only the objects that lie entirely inside the loop.

Choose Object → Plug-ins → Enclosing Lasso → Enclosing Lasso Tool.
Drag a loop around the objects.
Release the mouse button.

The night market scene at 150% zoom with the Enclosing Lasso tool chosen. One amber lantern is selected, each of its parts outlined in cyan, and a second loop drawn with Shift held runs most of the way around the next amber lantern, from the string to the tassel. The Properties panel reads 8 Objects

The tool measures each path without its stroke width or effects. Inside a group, it selects each fully enclosed object on its own. A compound path counts as one object. Hold Shift to add to the selection, or Alt (Option on macOS) to deselect the selected objects inside the loop. Press Esc during the drag to cancel.

Command	Windows and Linux	macOS	What it does
Select → All	Ctrl+A	Cmd+A	Selects every object on the visible, unlocked layers. While you are typing in a text object, it selects all of that text instead
Select → All on Active Artboard	Ctrl+Alt+A	Cmd+Option+A	Selects the objects that overlap the active artboard or whose center is on it
Select → Deselect	Ctrl+Shift+A	Cmd+Shift+A	Clears the selection
Select → Reselect	Ctrl+6	Cmd+6	Runs the last Select → Same command again
Select → Inverse			Selects every object that is not selected, and deselects the ones that are
Select → Next Object Above	Ctrl+Alt+]	Cmd+Option+]	Selects the next object above the selected one in its layer or group
Select → Next Object Below	Ctrl+Alt+[	Cmd+Option+[	Selects the next object below the selected one in its layer or group

Next Object Above and Next Object Below pass over hidden and locked objects. They are also on the canvas’s right-click menu, under Select. To select objects that share a fill, stroke, opacity or font, use Select → Same, described in Select objects that share an attribute.

Select objects of one kind

The Select → Object submenu selects every object of one kind in the document. Hidden and locked objects are left out.

Command	Selects
All on Same Layers	Every object on the layers that hold the selected objects
Direction Handles	Every anchor point of the selected paths, with their direction handles shown
Brush Strokes	Every object whose stroke uses a brush
Bristle Brush Strokes	Every object whose top stroke uses a bristle brush
Clipping Masks	Every clipping path
Slices	Every slice
Stray Points	Every path that has only one anchor point
Open Paths	Every path that is not closed
All Text Objects	Every type object
Point Text Objects	Every point type object
Area Text Objects	Every area type object

All on Same Layers and Direction Handles need a selection to start from.

Edit every copy at once with Global Edit

Global Edit finds the objects that have the same shape as the selected object, wherever they are and at whatever size. Any change you then make to one of them is made to all of them.

Select one path, compound path, symbol instance, or group of these.
Choose Select → Start Global Edit. The matching objects are highlighted.
Edit the selected object. Each match changes in proportion to its own size, so halving the height of a 100 pt object halves a 20 pt match to 10 pt.
To finish, choose Select → Stop Global Edit or press Esc.

The night market scene at 150% zoom during Global Edit. The yellow body of one lantern is being dragged taller by its bottom handle to a height of 110 px, the bodies of the other lanterns stretch with it inside thin cyan outlines, and the Properties panel shows Stop Global Edit

To leave one of the highlighted objects out, Shift-click it with the Selection tool. Hidden and locked matches are not changed. Global Edit includes at most 10,000 objects.

For a group, Global Edit finds the groups that hold the same kinds of objects in the same places. An edit to an object inside one group is made to the matching object in each of the others.

The Global Edit Options narrow the search. Open them with the arrow beside Start Global Edit in the Quick Actions section of the Properties panel, or on the Control bar.

The Quick Actions section of the Properties panel with the Global Edit Options open below Start Global Edit. Appearance and Size are off, All Artboards and Include Objects On Canvas are on, and the Results line reads 8

Option	Default	What it does
Appearance	Off	Matches only objects with the same fill and stroke
Size	Off	Matches only objects with the same width and height
All Artboards	On	Searches every artboard. Turn it off to type a Range, such as `1, 3-5`
Include Objects On Canvas	On	Also matches objects that lie on no artboard

The Results line shows how many objects Start Global Edit would include with the current options.

Save and reuse a selection

A saved selection stores a set of objects under a name, so you can select them again later. Saved selections are stored in the document.

Select the objects.
Choose Select → Save Selection….
Type a name and click OK. If you leave the suggested name, it is Selection 1, Selection 2 and so on.

The Save Selection dialog with Lanterns typed in the Name field and the Cancel and OK buttons, over the night market scene with the lanterns selected

The saved selections are listed by name at the bottom of the Select menu. Choose one to select its objects again. Objects that were deleted, hidden or locked since are left out.

To change what a saved selection holds, first choose it from the Select menu, change the selection, then choose Select → Update Selection.
To rename or delete saved selections, choose Select → Edit Selection…, pick a selection in the list, then change its Name or click Delete. Click OK to apply all the changes as one undo step.

The Edit Selection dialog over the night market scene. The Saved Selections list holds Lanterns and Amber Lantern Bodies, the second one is picked, and its Name field reads Amber Lantern Bodies above the Delete button

A document keeps up to 25 saved selections, with names up to 255 characters. Saving under a name that already exists replaces that saved selection. The Layers panel menu has the same commands under Save Selection.

Select by artboard

The Select by Artboards plug-in selects the objects on, inside or outside the artboards you choose.

Choose Object → Plug-ins → Selection Tools → Select by Artboards…. The dialog lists every artboard with its number, name and size. The active artboard is chosen.
Choose the artboards:
- Click a row to choose only that artboard.
- Ctrl-click (Cmd-click on macOS) a row to add or remove it.
- Shift-click a row to choose every row from the last one you clicked.
- Click Select All or None, or type in the search field to list only the artboards whose names contain the text.
In Select, choose how the objects relate to the chosen artboards.
Click OK.

The Select by Artboards dialog listing the artboards Poster, Flyer, Ticket, Badge and Banner with their sizes in pixels. Poster, Flyer and Badge are chosen, the line beside Select All and None reads Chosen: 3 of 5, and Select is set to Fully Inside. Below the dialog, the five artboards, labeled 01 - Poster to 05 - Banner, each show a dusk scene with lanterns and a setting sun

Select	Selects the objects that
Overlapping	Overlap one of the chosen artboards, or whose center is on one
Fully Inside	Lie entirely within one of the chosen artboards, edges included
Fully Outside	Are on none of the chosen artboards

Double-click a row to make that artboard active and fit it in the window. The dialog stays open. Hidden and locked objects, and objects on hidden, locked or template layers, are not selected. Chosen artboards that the search hides stay chosen, and the line beside the buttons shows how many are chosen.