How to make silhouettes with clipping paths in Photoshop

Themes Photoshop Silhouettes Graphic Design Presumptuousness:

Make a silhouette vignette, is to cut an image from the background or situation in which it is. Silhouetting an image, something very common in graphic design, is usually done to highlight an image eliminating other elements or to place it within another image making a photo montage.

In computerized graphic design, outlining figures can be done with many programs, but until recently the most common way of making silhouettes was to cut the images by applying a cutting way in Photoshop and saving the image as a .esp document Encapsulated PostScript file.

That was the case because transparencies now so fashionable did not exist the PostScript language does not support them and when they appeared they did so slowly: Many programs did not accept them well and caused problems when filming.

Things have changed. Newer versions of Photoshop have other, non-destructive procedures for outlining parts of images, and most other professional design programs accept them reasonably well. This is why many people claim that clipping paths are a thing of the past.

Without ban, it is still a valid technique for many cases indeed necessary in some of them and knowing how to make clipping paths is still necessary. Explaining how it is done and applied is the objective of this page.

Introduction: Paths, Pen, and Associated Tools:

As we have already explained, a path way is a line straight or curve that has intermediate and final points called nodes hubs and anchor points stay focuses or (control focuses.

Since its inception, Adobe Photoshop has allowed the inclusion of paths within bitmap images. These paths can be defined as cutting paths. That is: When we place the images in another program such as Quark X Press or In Design, those clipping paths will act as a vector mask: What is inside the path will be seen, while what is outside will be covered - but it will not be erased, it just won't be noticeable.

In Adobe Photoshop, paths are created and controlled with the pen tool pen:

• In the latest versions of Photoshop, the Pen tool has five variants. The one that interests us most is the Feather to dry, although we will also use Add anchor point Remove anchor point" and Convert anchor point.
• The paths are selected with the two selection arrows: path selection way determination and direct choice direct choice.
• Also, roughage a palette Window - Paths to treat them.
• Warning: Beware of pen preferences
• Bets of starting to work in Photoshop, feed to remember that vector tools have three basic mutually exclusive ways of acting in their preferences, which tend to mislead the novice user from left to right.
• Shape layers: This is the one that is activated by default. Used to draw layers of vector elements. It is not the option we should choose to make a clipping path.
• Paths: This is the one we must select when we are going to make a clipping path. Just draw vector paths. It is the "classic" mode of the pen.
• Fill pixels: The pen paints like a brush.
• If we want to work to make clipping paths, we must activate the "Paths" preference. Even these preferences are consented through the Window - Options" menu and are usually located in the prevalent left area of ​​the screen.
• How to draw the path
• Drawing good lines in any program with the pen is a technique that takes a while to master and we will not explain it here. Fortunately, to draw images you do not have to know a lot: It is enough to go over the edges wherever we want the cropping to occur.
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