Post by Ashlee on Sept 7, 2010 19:46:43 GMT -5
Step Two:
Open up your image, if it is not already open, in a screen. Once your image is opened again, if not already up, we are ready to start cutting out your wolf/image/character from the background. For sake of this tutorial I am going to use the term ‘wolf’, even if your image is not a wolf.
Again you will want to select your ‘Paths Tool’ (highlighted in blue). This tool, if you have not already realized from the last tutorial, is used quiet a bit in the beginning and middle staged of photo manipulating.
You are gong to want to zoom in to your image. At the bottom of the window your image is opened in you will find a drop down menu with percents in it. I like to zoom in to 800%. I personally like a lot of detail, so the closer I can get to the image the more realistic I feel I can get. Again, that is just my opinion.
Using the ‘Paths Tool’, you will want to select around the image you want to cut out. Sense I want to cut out the whole wolf; I am going to click around the outside of the wolf. The dots will be placed right on the border of the wolf and the background. Do not feel you need to go around all the fur strands. We will go back into the image at a later day. (See creating fur tutorial).
Once you have made it all the way around you will want to click on your starting dot, just like with the eye tutorial.
You will want to zoom out and see if you have selected everything from your image. If you have forgotten anything, you will either want to redo it… or more some dots around by clicking on a dot and dragging out to your desired position.
You will once again click on ‘Select’ and slide down to ‘From path’. This will place the infamous marking ants around your image.
To cut out the wolf from the background is very simple. Click back on ‘Select’ and drag your curser down to ‘Invert’ and select it. By doing this you are inverting the selection to the outside area around the marching ants, rather then the wolf itself.
Now you will want to select from the top menu ‘Edit’ and slide your curser down to ‘Cut’. This will cut out your background and leave the image you put the path around.
This is where you will want to be carful. If the area you cut out is white you will want to change it to the alpha channel. Select on the drop down menu ‘Layer’
And slide down to ‘Transparency’ and slide over to ‘Add alpha Channel’. This will create a gray-checkered background behind your wolf image. Meaning that the image is transparent.
You can zoom out to get a full idea of what you have finished so far, if you are not already zoomed out. From this point you can tell if there is anything else that needs to be cut out. (i.e. areas between the legs, etc.)
Again you will select on the ‘Paths Tool’ and clock around the area to cut out. You will ‘Select From Path’ and the ‘Edit and ‘Cut’.
This will reveal the alpha channel/transparency we added to the rest of the background a few steps back.
After you are done you will want to click on the top drop down menu ‘Select’ followed by ‘None’. This will get rid of all the marching ants on your image.
