Once we start using some photo editing tool, little by little most users are bitten by the bug and the curiosity to learn to make new touches and effects in their photographs or start doing some type of assembly
It is therefore, when we need to start using certain tools in addition to the selection to trim, brushes, eraser, etc.
One of the things that most often attract attention is how to crop an object, person or part of an image by its silhouette. That is, as we would do with scissors if we had the photo in our hands. In this way, later we will be able to add it to another photo in the form of a montage without noticing that that object, image or person was not there in its origin.
Therefore, we will see how we can do this in Photoshop in a simple way so that it is available to any user regardless of their knowledge in PhotoShop.
How to crop an object or person from an image easily with Photoshop
Use the magic wand
It is possible that some of you have already tried to make this type of cuts on objects with a color or several, but all of them uniform. In this case, we can select them quickly and easily using the magic bar, since when you click on a color with it selected, you are able to make the selection of everything that is the same color and is attached. In addition, we can add other colors to the selection by holding down the Shift key.
The variable "tolerance" found in the upper part allows us to configure the similarity of color and tone that we can accept. The greater the more shades it will take. A very low value, or a very high one, will cause us to have problems selecting.
This tool will only serve us for very simple and basic cases and it will not be worth it to trim the silhouette of more complex objects with a lot of color mixing, such as the silhouette of a person.
How to crop an image with the magnetic loop
A little more advanced than the wand we have the magnetic loop tool. With this tool we can also make quick selections if there is enough contrast between the image to be cropped and the background. To use it, just select it and click near the edge of the image you want to crop.
It may be an interesting alternative, but if the image is very complex it is not the best alternative. As you can see in the previous capture, it only detects drastic changes in color and hue.
Pen: the best Photoshop tool to crop images
If what we want is a professional result, what we are going to do is use the Pen tool. This is on top of the Text tool, and we must ensure that it is in plot mode.
With it we will click on a point in the silhouette of what we want to cut. At that moment we see how a small square appears and from there we will be clicking on the silhouette of the object or person we want to cut until we border it completely.
It must be said that when we click together more, especially in rounded areas, the cut will be better, since the final silhouette of the cut will be formed by the straight lines that join all those squares. It is true that with the pen tool we can make selections with rounded shapes, but we will see it in another tutorial carefully.
Together when we get to close the silhouette, we will see how if we put the mouse pointer on the first square we made, a circle will appear that means that if we click on it, we will close the path. That is exactly what we have to do right now. So we close the path and see how the edge of the silhouette marked with our cutout will appear.
Clicking on the cropped image with the right mouse button we can select the image that we just cropped by its silhouette. Then to copy it we will have to open a new layer or image, with the transparent background and paste it into it. In this way, we already have it ready to use it wherever we want and whenever we want.
Now, we can only go to the image where we want to add the object or person cut, copy it and paste it into the new image.
It is convenient that it be about the same size as the original, so that the proportions of size are maintained. However, we can also select the image pasted using the Photoshop keyboard shortcut Ctrl + T and drag from one of the four corners by holding the Shift key pressed to make the image larger or smaller while maintaining the proportions so that it is not misshapen.
Once we put everything to our liking, we click outside the cropped image and confirm that we want to apply the changes.
Date update on 2019-10-14. Date published on 2019-10-14. Category: Photoshop Author: Oscar olg Fuente: softzone