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They say that pen is mightier than the sword, and indeed, the Pen Tool is a powerful blade -- easily one of Photoshop's most difficult tools to use, which is why it merits giving it a bit of an introduction before you use it freeform.
Open up a new image, giving it workable dimensions (800 width by 600 height should be enough), and strike up your Pen tool by selecting it from the tool bar (or by pressing P).
We've provided a cheat sheet to give you a thorough understanding of what each option in the top navigation bar does for the Pen tool. Click on the image to enlarge it.
Download the cheat sheet if need be and try your hand at making your own shapes and curves. Keep in mind that maneuvering your pen tool can seem incredibly challenging at times. As long as you’ve got the basics down, it should be a fairly simple attempt. The trick is in figuring out how to create subpaths, which is the point at which the path starts.
To create a curve, start by clicking anywhere in your document, then click and hold elsewhere on your blank palette. Slowly drag the mouse in any direction to create an anchor point.
The bullet points now illustrate where your curve points are, which further enhance the current curve. To move these curve points, hold ALT and drag. To move the anchor point or the subpath, hold CTRL. Refer to the image below to distinguish between the subpath, an anchor point, and a curve point.
Photoshop has a great built-in tutorial on how to use the pen tool. Hit F1 to do a search in the how-to guide and keep practicing!
Using what you've just learned about the Pen Tool, we're going to trace our object, extract it, and save it as a new image.
Original Image:
1. Open up your image of choice. If this is your first time cutting out an object, we suggest choosing a photo that does not contain an elaborate background.
2. Select the Pen tool to begin tracing the image. Start at a decent anchor point and make a path around your image, but be precise. When you’re finished tracing, make sure the lines are all connected.
3. To make a selection out of your path, right click and select Make Selection, making sure Anti-Aliased is selected and Feathering is set to zero.
Copy it by using the Ctrl + C shortcut. Then, go to File – New, select OK and paste your image with Ctrl + V.
The window at the top left is your extracted object.
Quick Tip: You can use this same extraction technique in Adobe Image Ready to export objects from an Animated GIF. Simply load the GIF in Image Ready, select a frame, and then repeat the above steps.
Comments are closed on this article
dracx619
July 21, 2010 at 3:19am
f#!$ off douchelord! no one cares and no one here is stupid enough to click or look at any of your links!
dentaku
March 20, 2009 at 6:00pm
I saw a few little OSX screenshots (probably old stuff they got from somewhere else) and all the rest where Vista.
smashingpumpin
March 11, 2009 at 8:37pm
umm k, great tips! now where's the part to make fake celebs? lol
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Darth Ninja
March 11, 2009 at 8:33pm
Kind of funny, but am I the only one that thinks the final image looks worse then the starting one for the "Remove Flash Spots" bit?
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DarthNinja
www.DarthNinja.com
knexkid
March 11, 2009 at 2:58pm
Tip number 3:
Use Level Adjustments and Color Correction to bring an photo to lifeAn photo? An hero? An computer? An elephant? Ahh, there we go....
great article though!
Marcus_Soperus
March 11, 2009 at 11:23am
In recent versions, Photoshop Elements has been revved up so it can perform almost all of the tips in this article. You will need to use a different selection tool for cutting out an object (such as magnetic lasso) and PSE lacks Actions,, but other stuff like adjustment layers (kudos for mentioning this) are in both PSE and its full-powered sibling. In PSE, you can use the File menu's option to process multiple photos to perform resizing or conversion to other formats.
BTW, if you use multiple adjustment layers, you can really change how the finished photo works by changing layer order.
BTW #2: if you want to print your newly-improved creations at a photofinishing kiosk or online printing service, stick with maximum-quality JPEG; these services usually don't understand other formats.
Thanks for the article!
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It's amazing how illogical a business built on binary logic can be.
xveganx
March 11, 2009 at 10:23am
"Create an Action Script to resize a large batch of photos"
is there a way to do this with the GIMP?
MAXPCreader07
March 11, 2009 at 8:51am
This seems like great tips except I use The GIMP not Photoshop.
Keith E. Whisman
March 11, 2009 at 10:35am
Have you ever heard of Gimp Shop? It's supposed to be TheGimp but with all the looks and feel of Photoshop and I have heard that it also has the same functionality so that if you really know photoshop then GimpShop will be second nature. So I would assume all these features will work but I don't know as I use neither. I just push the button on my camera and hope for the best.
sinan
March 11, 2009 at 8:48am
I always did things the hard way in photoshop. I always meant to look up some tutorials to learn some useful tricks but never found the time or was too intimidated. These are neat little things to do.
Anyone knows of a good site with such tutorials that I can check out?
Thanks
dracx619
March 11, 2009 at 11:58am
tutorialoutpost.com
thats where i learned photoshop almost 6 years ago
