• Quick Mask
• Channel Mask
• Quick Reflection
• More to come

• Flash Steam

• Joomla : Things to remember...
• More to come

• Custom Shapes : People
• Custom Shapes : Scrollwork
• More to come

In this tutorial, we will discuss how to cutout an element from an image. There are several was that you can do this, including the magic wand tool, the lasso tool, and the color selection tool, but the most precise way is to use the quick mask tool. With the quick mask tool, you can make minute precise adjustments to the selection area, and you can save the selection for use at a later date.

We will end up with an image that looks like this ›

This is the image we will use for this tutorial. Notice that the background is too busy to use the magic wand or the color selection tool on. In order to get a nice clean selection, we will use the quick mask tool, which allows us to use the paintbrush and eraser tools to create a selection.

To start select the quick mask button in your toolbar. It's the small circle button (indicated in the image to the right) near the bottom of your toolbar. This will swap you over to a mask mode, while in this mode you can use marquee, paintbrush, and eraser tools, without affecting the original image.

You will notice that your paint colors have swapped to black and white. If you attempt to paint on the image with the black color selected, it will paint the image with a transparent red color, and if you paint with white selected it will erase the red color.

Select your paintbrush tool and start painting the areas of the image that you do not want selected. Be sure to use a smaller brush along the edges of your intended selection. This will create a much smoother line than a large brush will.

If you make a mistake and need to erase part of the red area, simply swap your color to white and paint away your mistake. For sharp areas (like the spot between the arm and the body) you will have to paint over the intended selection area, and then erase it to a point.

Once you have the outline of your object, you can select a larger brush and paint the remaining area quickly. You can also use any of the selection tools and the paint bucket to fill that area.

You should now have something that looks like this. ›

Now swap back to the normal mode by clicking the button on your toolbar that is to the left of the quick mask button you pressed earlier.

You should now see the "marching ants" around your selection area.

Now you can copy and paste the selected area into a new layer, or you can create a channel mask layer that can be saved so you can load this selection at a later date.

You should now have something that looks like this ›

More Tutorials ›