Making a cutout from a photo with Paint Shop Pro

Making a cutout from a photo with Paint Shop Pro

Here are small versions of the two photos
that I am using in this tut.
To see finished cutouts, click on the image.
[These photos are from MorgueFile.]

First, work large! Use your original photo in the largest version, or a little smaller, that you have of it. You can always zoom in and out on it to view what you want. You can shrink down your cutout later. [Don't forget to sharpen it after you do.] If your computer won't work with the large image and hangs up, then work smaller. Whichever you do, save your image often during your work.
When you do save, save in psp format not as a jpg, etc.

Second, after opening your photo, duplicate it and close the original. This is so that you won't accidently destroy the original photo. To duplicate, hold down the "shift" key and hit the "d" key. Save this duplicate as a psp image.

Third, if your photo is on the background layer [which it probably will be when you open it], promote it to a raster layer. The reason for this is that you want to have a transparent background and you won't if you leave it as the background layer. "Promote background layer" is located under "layers".

To make your working image smaller, you can also use the selection tool set on rectangle or freehand, for example, to save the section of the photo that you want to cut out; and then paste it as a new image with a transparent background. This will make your work area more manageable. For example, go around the general perimeter of the dog with the selection tool and click on save and then paste it as a new image. This will make your work area smaller than your original photo without shrinking down the "subject" of your cutout. But don't try to get in too close to the "subject"....leave the detail work for the next steps.
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Set up two layers below your cutout layer. Floodfill one layer with black and one with white. Turn these layers off while you are doing the cutting out, and turn them on and off as you work to see what your cutout looks like on both a black and white background. You may not be able to get it to look perfect on both so you may have to decide which it should look best on. Later when you add the cutout into the image you are doing you can touch up the edges where needed.

Note for challengers at Plus, challenge 108: Use a background of #ECF3F6 so that your finished image will match the background when you post your image at Plus. However, if you post your image at your site, then you might want to use a matching background color for both your image and your page.

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Now you are finally ready to start cutting.

For everything but straight edges:

Now open your eraser tool. Set the "hardness" DOWN....try it first around 50 or lower. I have mine set a lot lower than that much of the time. Experiment around with it. Why have the hardness down? Because that is what helps prevent those awful jaggies that we are always faced with.

Tight areas: As the size of your eraser goes down the hardness has to do down too...this smaller size will be necessary when you are getting into crannies and corners.

For straight edges:

Open up your selection tool. Set it on "point to point". Go along the edge of the straight area that you want to cut out and take in some of the area that you want to eliminate by left clicking from point to point. When you have returned to the starting point and left clicked, then right click on that same point and that will finish the selection. Now hit delete on your keyboard or use "cut" and the delineated area will be gone. You probably will have to use both methods of cutting, eraser and selection, as I did to finish this wheel.

This tutorial is copyrighted to Holder. Please let me know if you want to link to it.

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