PS Wand tool doesn't select the area you want it to

There are areas that are a single color

Some areas might look like “one” color, but they aren’t.

If you inspect the image with the Threshold adjustment, it shows that the areas that look like “one” color to the eye actually cover a range of levels, so the Magic Wand tool must be set to cover that range. On top of that, Threshold shows that some of the color values within one shape also appear in other parts of the image, so it might help to enable the Contiguous option. 

(I recorded a demo of this, but the forum software is not accepting embedded media right now, so click the link below.)

Threshold demo of your image

This is why the Magic Wand tool (which is over a third of a century old at this point) is at the bottom of my list for selection tools I want to use. On a graphic like this, I would rather try Color Range, Quick Selection, or Object Selection first. Or maybe channel-based selection depending on the colors. Magic Wand only selects a specific range of color levels, based on the range set by its Tolerance, and unlike the Quick Selection and Object Selection tools, the Magic Wand tool is too primitive to know whether those levels are part of a specific shape, or also used in other unrelated areas of the image.

​@bellevue scott 

What is the Tolerance set to? You need to lower it if it’s selecting too much.
Also try Resetting the tool and starting again. Right click the Magic Wand in the options bar (not toolbar) and Reset Tool.

Jane

Scott, I have questions as a learner.

“PS 27.11.0, I’m trying to use the wand tool” -- have you tried the selection in older versions of Photoshop?

Everything is a shade of orange; I can’t tell what is masked. I would need to see the image before the mask was applied.

What are your settings for the magic wand tool --
Sample size, tolerance, contiguous?