Cutting A PSD
Oki-doki, what we need to do first is choose a subject! I'll be using the ever so beautiful Amanda Bynes. You can use whoever you like or the same as me (picture here).
01. Open/drag/copy&paste Amanda to Photoshop. Select the Polygonal Lasso Tool (shortcut: L)
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02. I find when I'm cutting a PSD its essential that I zoom in. You can move the lasso tool a lot easier and really follow the outline of your subjects body with precision. So press Z on your keyboard to select the Zoom tool. Depending on your images size, you may need to zoom in quite a bit or not so much. I'm using a medium sized picture so I only have to zoom 6-8 times. Get a feel for what you find comfortable though. The more the better imo.
03. The idea of making a PSD is to eliminate the background so you're left with just Amanda. We do this by clicking from one point to the next. When you start working with the PL tool be warned that you can't minimize or select another program or something until you have finished outlining.
I'm going to start at her right shoulder. Align your pointer as close as possible to the distinct outline of Amanda's right shoulder and click. This is your starting point. Working with short/small lines is the best for this type of thing. Don't make your clicks too long because the shorter they are the more control you have, which is essential when outlining curves.
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When you finally make it all the way around your subjects body and are back to your starting point press Enter on your keyboard and this should complete your outline and bring up the marching ants!
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04. Now that the hard part is done, lets move on to actually getting rid of that pesky background! On your layer pallet you should have a single layer called background. It'll look something similar to this:
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Double click that layer and a box will pop up. Use the default settings it pops up with and click OK. We've just made our image into a single layer. This means we can erase the background and we'll be left with a transparent one.
05. Go back to your image (select the polygonal lasso tool again if it isnt already) So far, we've selected Amanda but now we need to reverse the selection so everything BUT Amanda is selected. We do this by right clicking > Select Inverse.
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Now, hit delete on your keyboard and watch as the background magically disappears ^-^ We can now deselect by hitting ctrl+D on our keyboard.
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06. We're almost done, but first we need to fix up a few *tiny* annoyances:
HAIR: For me I hate getting rid of the background amongst strands/flares of hair. Work patiently and if a strand is thin and you don't think she needs it, cut it away.
Examples...
(01)
(02)
(03)
JAGGED EDGES: Usually you get those annoying jagged edges when you don't cut close enough to the outline. Zoom in more and try again but this time go slightly inside your subjects outline. This almost always fixes the problem for me. If that fails to help, then repeat the steps until you get to step 3 and, on your tools task bar, change the feathering to 1px. This will blur the edges slightly and help reduce the jagged edges.
07. Its now time to save our file. Two ways.
Considering we're making a cutout PSD you can save your file as a .psd so that a person has to download the file and open it in Photoshop to view it. Photobucket, TinyPic and even Piczo do not host .psd files. So unless you have a separate host or your own domain I'd choose the next option, saving as a transparent .png
Saving as .PSD
a) File >> Save As...
b) A box will pop up. Choose a location to save your file to and name it. Change the format to match the
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Saving as .PNG
a) File >> Save For Web...
b) A window will pop up. Select the same settings I've chosen and click save. Another box will pop up and you can choose a location and name for your file.
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Upload your PSD and show off your newly acquired skill ^^;
