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Clipping Path Tutorial - Using Photoshop Pen Tool

It's really a tedious job for photographers to remove the background of their photos and sometimes even unable to do so properly due to the lake of knowledge of handling the Photoshop Pen Tool. Some people even don't know about the Pen Tool and try to use some other techniques to cut-out their images, while the quality becomes very low and improper to use.


How to Clip Photo

The following tutorial is for the people those who are trying to learn how to change the background of an image in appropriate/ professional manner and or have regular images to be clipped but not finding the suitable approach. In this tutorial I will take you through some of the steps on how to draw path around the image and finally how take the background off.

1. Open Adobe Photoshop (whatever version you have) in your computer and go to file menu then select "Open". From the open dialogue box, choose the photo you would like to remove the background from and click "Open".

2. Once the file is open, make sure that the Tool box, Layer palette & Path palette is shown in your monitor screen. If not, go to window menu and select the palettes you are looking for. Select "Pen Tool" from the tool box and choose "Paths" from the pen tool properties box which is located underneath of the main Menu bar. This is to make sure that the path we will be drawing will not have fill color rather than the stroke.

3. Now, click on the edge of the image and drag the mouse pointer towards the next step and release the mouse. After an appropriate distance, again click on the image edge and continue in the same manner until you have completed moving around the image and finally see this "O" symbol. This "O" symbol means you are going to close the path. Click on it (starting point) in order to close the path.

4. Once the path is completed check that again if there is any inaccurate portion. To save the path, go to "Path Palette", double click on the "work path" and heat Ok. Now the path is saved and you are about to remove the background shortly.

5. Go to "pop up" menu from the Paths palette and select "Clipping Path...". A dialogue box will appear asking to choose your desired Path and Flatness. Select "Path 1" since we have drawn only one path which is available there and put the flatness you would like to use (flatness is the desired amount of pixel you want to make blur the edge of the image) and click "OK". You are now almost done. The more amount you use in Flatness the more blurish will be the edge of your image. In general, leave the Flatness box blank (0) and the image edge will be 100% sharp which is most of the time appropriate.

6. You can now save the file in PSD or TIFF format and are ready to place into the program you are working with for your design. And his time you will get the image without the background.

If you would like to learn more about clipping path or have images that need to be clipped and are looking for cheap clipping path service provider, visit: Clipping Path Specialist

Atiqur R Sumon is a self motivated professional Graphic/ Web Designer and Image Editor with years of hands on experience in the field.


by Atiqur R Sumon

Published 29 January 2009
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