Graphics Zone - Cutting out

CE CASH 3.0

Cutting out from a Photo in Photoshop

by BarryHilton, Adult NetSurprise

This tutorial shows you how to quickly and easily cut out a girl from a photo, it doesn't use complicated masks or extracts... and it's ideally suited to working with photos on the web :) We'll start with our original photo...

First of all, start by duplicating the girl layer... Select the background layer on the Layers Menu, right click and select 'Duplicate'. Then make the original 'Background' layer invisible, click the 'eye' to the left of the layer (it should disappear).

The next step is to get to our working magnification... you'll need to zoom to 400% or 500% to make it easy to cut away the background, you can do this either by using the Zoom tool on the Tool Bar or by pressing + on your keyboard. Now, select the 'Lasso Marquee' tool from the main tool bar and enter a value of 0 pixels for feather. If you can't see where to enter the feather value go to the 'Windows' menu at the top of the screen and select 'Show Status Bar'.

Carefully trace around the side of her hair, in a small selection, then complete your marquee by selecting an area of background going around and back to the top of her head... If you make small errors, while drawing your marquee, you can hold shift on your keyboard to add to your selection and Alt on your keyboard to subtract from your selection.

When you're happy with your selection... hit delete on your keyboard! You should have something like our image above :o) The next steps are to repeat this procedure, again in small areas that you can comfortably draw, working around anti-clockwise around her body until you're back where you started!

Don't worry about every tiny hair... just follow the flow of her hair and it'll look just fine.

Don't forget to cut out any areas that are 'inside' your selection, like in between her arm and leg in our photo. When you're finished you should have something like our example below...

Now, the picture looks OK here, but we need to check you haven't missed any areas... To do this select the 'Background' layer that we previously made invisible... then press the small square button with the cut away corner at the bottom of the Layers menu to create a new layer... this will be above your old background layer and below the your cut out layer.

Select the fill or gradient tool from the main tool menu and fill your new layer with a suitable color... dark if you're cutting out from a light background and light if you're cutting from a dark background.

As you can see, we missed quite a few 'white' dots around her body! Just zoom back in to 500%, select the Lasso tool from the main tool menu, keep the feather set at 0 pixels and, again using easy to draw small selection, carefully cut away any extra white areas that you don't want...

When you're finished you should have something like our example below :o) Then just click and drag your newly cut out girl on to her new background or position in your logo!

On a last note... if the girls edges are looking too sharp, select the Magic Wand tool from the main tool menu, click in all areas that you cut out (in our example outside of the girl and between her arm and leg), holding shift on your keyboard you you need to select more than one... Go to the 'Select' menu at the top of the screen, choose 'Feather' and enter 1 pixel... Hit delete on your keyboard and your girl will have a softer edge :o)

This technique takes a little practice, but well worth mastering.