tutorial - how to cut out a figure in a picture.
From this
to this
So we have this attractive fucker (Tom Hiddleston) to help. So first of all, you resize and colour the picture. It’s possible to do the colouring afterwards but I much prefer to do it beforehand and prep the background to my liking. It could be anything that you put behind the cut out. I like plain colours but you can put patterns as well.
I am resizing it to 500px (go to Image > Image size) so it’s easier to select. But
SO CHOOSE YOUR COLOURING. I’m choosing a relatively simple one (which you can find on recreatemepsd). Flatten the image so it can be cut out.
Personally, I prefer to use the quick select on these settings:
But some people prefer to use the magnetic lasso:
After you finish selecting the photo, it should look like this;
but that wouldn’t look good if you just used that cut out, so what you do is go to “Select > refine edge” and change the settings so it’s a little bit smoother. I always leave the edges a tiny bit feathered, so when the image is sharpened, it won’t look awful along the edges:
So once I’m done with that, I press okay and then go to “Edit > cut” and paste it onto my background canvas (which is 500 x 550px) and then hide the layer so I can work on the background. I just choose a fill layer with my desired colour. I’ve chosen an orangey colour. I also layered over a gradient on soft light 40%
if there’s any extra colour around the image you pasted (that isn’t supposed to be there) then zoom in about 500x and erase them.
So once you’ve erased, flatten the image and then sharpen.
Your finished product should be kind of like this? Or better because I SUCK at this. LOL.
So a recent trend is that colourful shadow, so if you want to do that, go back to when it wasn’t flattened and sharpened and duplicate the layer of Tom (or whoever your cut out is) and select the bottom layer and pull it sidewards a little so you have a bit of a “shadow”. Go to “Layer > layer style > colour overlay”. I chose blue, but you can choose whatever. Press okay and then sharpen (filter > sharpen > sharpen) that layer twice (so the edges are a bit sharper) and pull the gradient above that:
Flatten the image, do another sharpen and then you’re done! (Other examples, textures used beneath and then above)
