Photoshop is by far the most widely used professional editing program by editors and photographers today. It is even used for movie special effects; but it’s its even more basic features that make it so useful. For example, you can learn how to outline an image for silhouette in Photoshop easily.
By outlining an image in Photoshop you make many editing options possible. For example, it helps you to crop only the section you chose when outlining it and focus your editing only on it. It is also possible to change the color of the object and perform other processes and changes only in this particular area that we outlined above.
Photoshop can be much more useful if you start to master some of the basic processes that go into making larger edits easier. For this reason, the selection or outline tools, the snipping tool, text, drawing, and so on, must essentially be mastered by everyone.
How to outline an image to get the silhouette in Photoshop easily
To start, we advise you to activate the guide lines, margins and the ruler. In this way, you will work with greater precision. Then, select the “Pen” tool, with its iconic and detectable pen symbol which is very easy to recognize. Now, along the entire area or zone that we want to outline, we will make points with the pen tool.
In this way we will select what will be the area that we want to outline so that we can later work on it freely. It should be noted that our “Pen” tool preference should be set to “Selection” mode or in some versions of Photoshop set to “Path”.
To get the silhouette we just outlined, we need to go ahead and finish the selection process. Let’s continue placing these points with the pen in path preference until we reach the starting point again, that is, the first point placed. It is assumed that once you place the mouse with the tool on the first point you will see a circular symbol.
This will mean that it is now possible to create the outline that we want to enclose the selection of the digital image. We will right click on this last and first point to reveal all the possible options and click “Make Selection”. After which a new range of options will open regarding the selection which you will have to edit or not according to your preferences.
How to cut out the image that we outlined and draw its silhouette in Photoshop
There are two very common methods to achieve this, one simpler than the other but with similar results. The first consists of simply using the “Crop” tool to cut out the area that we have previously selected. Simply outline our area with any selection tool and apply the crop tool to it. If the snipping tool gets stuck, try to fix it and continue with the procedure.
What would be expected is that once we have completed this, the desired figure has already been cut, but if not, we can use the other method.
To comply with this method it is absolutely necessary to have already outlined and selected the entire area of ​​the image that we want to cut out. And in addition, we must have open the options of the selection.
Enter the selection options that should have been opened after clicking the “Make selection” option, in this section we will edit the fade radius. It is best to increase it to the maximum so that only the area of ​​​​the photo that we outline remains visible.
After this, it only remains to copy and paste the image on another layer to complete the cutout effect. Thus, you will place the first image on top of the second to give a relationship effect.
Is Photoshop Useful?
Photoshop is undoubtedly the most complete and standard editing program that we can currently get. Although sometimes it can be difficult to know how to manage all its processes, but it is rewarding to be able to use it and stand out in your editing work.
