Cutting out photographs

One real world photoshop tip I learned was cutting out photos. I myself love getting the project that involves cutting photos off their backgrounds. It’s totally something I can do for hours. Now taking the photographs, as I have learned recently, is something I am not too fond of – I’m sure you will be able to see why in the following photos of my lovable but completely nutty niece.

I volunteered my photography services to my sister so that I can practice shooting pictures. I also have a background and decided to make my parents’ living room into a studio for a night. Now my niece, who loves being in front of the camera is also, as you can see, the daughter of the devil and was completely unable to sit still. I have about 150 pix or so of her pretty much in a blur. Fifty of those pictures were of her with her foot aimed at the camera – I didn’t get the foot thing, but it made her laugh like a crazy person. The best pix are of Curious George with his friend Totoro the spirit of the forest and the other pic is where I finally lost my mind and ahem… lightly scolded my niece using my "not-so-indoor voice". If you look closely she seems like she is only pretending to be hurt and upset – What she really wants to do is laugh at her then momentarily insane uncle.

Seeing as I don’t have many options, I will use the holding-back-the-laughter-at-the-crazy-uncle-as-I-pretend-to-be-angry pic.

Here’s how you do it:

1. If you took the pic out of a digital camera, when you bring it in to Photoshop it will probably have a little lock on the layer in the layers palette. You have to unlock it or it won’t allow you to do the next steps. To unlock the layer hold down the "alt" key and double click the lock icon. You should now have that layer unlocked.


2. Use the vector mask option to make a mask. I like using the victor tool a lot more than a regular raster based masked because tweeking the line is a lot easier. Also if you get good at it you can cut out an image fairly quickly and definitely faster than if you where to do it with a raster based mask. So select the pen tool in your tools palette or hit the “P” key. Also try to learn your quick keys – it will allow you to work more efficiently. For me I also learned that using quick keys will save your hand from carpal tunnel.



3. In the options at the top you should have a different setting you can adjust. In the area where you can choose the type of path you can make choose paths which should be the option in between shape layers and fill pixels.



4. Now you can cut away to your hearts content.Note: as you go around you can use the direction points that come off the anchor points to curve the line in the direction you want to go by switching to the direct selection tool (the white vector pointer) or while using the pen tool holding the ctrl key and clicking and dragging the direction point. If you don’t like the curve you created you can hold alt and click and drag off the anchor point.



5. Once you have the cutout you want right click anywhere on the canvas and you should get a popup menu. In that menu, select “create vector mask”.
   At this point, I will add a solid color or work on a background that would look good for the image. I am just going to through a background with a gradient just for a little something.

There you have it, a cut out of an angry child on a plain background. Enjoy!