Here’s a quick way of cutting out an object and pasting it onto another background using Photofiltre’s Polygon Tool. It’s a similar way to my earlier post “How to make photo cutouts and clippings using Photofiltre” but less complicated. This method is widely used by many Photofiltre users, just checkout some of the YouTube Photofiltre tutorials using this technique.
Let’s get started….
Select your picture.
This technique works best where there is no internal cut-out required and you can simply cut around the outside of the object to select and then copy it.
Photo credit: Chilli Photograph(Flickr)
Select the Polygon Tool.
If you can’t find the Polygon Tool click on the arrow pointer to reveal the selection tools.
Select the Polygon Tool…Begin at the corner.
Start with an edge carefully clicking around the outside until….
…you meet up at the beginning. The object is then selected.
Right mouse click and select COPY.
Paste onto background picture graphic. Open up your background.
Check out my Downloads Page for sources of backgrounds.
I sourced these four Sunvectors from Photobucket.com…..Click here for more.
Right mouse click and select PASTE. Then, move it into position, and finally right mouse click and select VALIDATE PASTE.
Smoothing the edges using Antialiasing or Progressive Contour when pasting.
Cutting out with the Polygon Tool is not a perfect process, you may notice a few jaggy edges and perhaps parts of the original background still present when you paste in. You can improve the final paste by selecting Antialias or Progressive Contour settings.
Find the settings on the main menu:
Selection>>Antialiasing…
There are 3 options:
-
None – No Change.
-
Antialias – Smooths the edges and reduces jaggy bits.
-
Progressive Contour – feathers the edges of the cut out.
See the difference between Antialias and Progressive Contour.
Using the Blur Tool to fix up edges.
The Blur Tool is useful for fixing up jaggy edges or some of the remaining background . Remember to use carefully and don’t over do it as too much blurring may make it look worse.
Using the Blur Tool.
Final product!
Matsu inside Sunvector.
Hope this helps!
Cheers,
Jeff.
That’s awesome, must have steady hand though (to trace). Her cleavage is nice! lol.
haha! Thanks Neo. You have a good eye for detail
ur awesome=] thanx!
Hi Jeff,
I had a problem with the cropping. I managed to outline the image until it formed a ‘selection’, but then when I copied it to paste onto another background, it pasted everything within that ‘box’ that appears once the entire image is ‘selected’. Like when you have that speech bubble that says “until it joins up at the beginning creating a ‘selection’” in one of the images, it shows a box outline around the ‘selection.’ Do you know how to correct that, please? Thanks!
Hi Blue,
I know how you mean, you’ve done a outline with the Polygon Tool, then once it joins up you get the selection with which looks like “dancing ants” running around the outside of your object you want copy. Also appearing is a square box around all of this which called the “bounding box”. Try turning off the the Bounding Box feature by going to Selection>> Bounding box and uncheck it. See if this has any effect.
Jeff.
Hey jeff
I just want to kno how to put a shadow around the image that is cutted out.
Dwane
Jeff,
Thanks for the help on cutouts, I have been trying to use the lasso tool which proved to difficult. Using the polygon tool was much easyer. I just did a partial cut out and want to safe it to put on a web-site I’m building…How do I do this, tryed safe as and it saved the pic as it was (no cut out) I copyed and pasted and it worked fine but I don’t want it on a background as I want the cutout portion to be transparent.
Thanks a bunch,
Ken
Dwane:
SO this means you may need to use the Polygon tool again and re-select the part you whish to apply the drop shadow to.
Try using the drop shadow effect(Filter>>Stylize>>Drop Shadow). From there you can select the colour, opacity and angle of the Shadow. However this might prove a little tricky after you have pasted it, because the transformed section suddenly changes into a square for some reason
Ken:
What you need to is use the “Crop” function. Make a selection with the polygon tool, then… right mouse click…. and select “crop”.
If your using a regular shape like a square or rectangle, you can paste this onto a background the same colour as your webpage, then it all matches up nicely. When you open a new blank document, select the matching webpage colour(default is white) to paste onto.
Another way is to use transparent .GIFs. – Goto Image>>Transparent Color and then select the colour you wish to make transparent, this allows the background to come through. Note that it changes to 256color mode when you do this. Save as .gif file.
Note you can get some pretty cool text effects by doing this as well.
Jeff.
how do you do internal cut outs?
Hey jeff
I now know how to do it prefectly but i didnt used any of the method.
Heyy Jeff!
Thanks for the tutorials! They’ve really helped me alot! ? I’ll be back soon! Ha Ha Ha lol
Hey dude i love this site i realy did not know how to work PHOTOFiLTEr.!! When i left this site i left as a pro love it keep up the good work
*MUAH* Hugs in Kisses A Costumer.!!
LOLx
This didnt help me at all i didnt understand it
this is awsome!
u should do back grounds and layouts to for sunvectors nd stuff
hey jeff,
your tutorials have made me increase my knowledge of photofiltre well.
But i have one problem with the polygon tool,
while im clicking around, at some random part it automatically connects with the other end?
this made me have to use the lasso. is there a way to fix this?
thanks. :]
Hi Tristan,
Yeah.. can be damn frustrating sometimes using the Polygon Tool. I sometimes have the opposite problem..unable to connect.
Try “zooming in” on the object you wish to select with the Polygon Tool to make the object easier to select. You can even make the object bigger than the screen, then use the side scroll bars to move the image up and down while you use the Polygon Tool.
When I click on Antialias and Progressive Contour, it doesn’t change anything. Why not?
HI Addy,
Possibly your pic file is quite large and when pasted there is no visible difference. You could try doing a test by doing doing two different edits, one with progressive contour the other antialias, then use the the zoom tool to examine the edges for difference.
Also note that the progessive contour or antialias effect is not applied until you right mouse click “Validate Paste”
Jeff.
Thank you so much!
you helped me out a lot!
when i tryed using the Antialiasing or Progressive Contour it didnt work how do u do that
I traced and copied but I can’t get my image to paste on the background image. Any tips?
hey jeff!
first of all thank you for your great tutorials
i have an similar problem to what blue had… when i right click on the selection i made and then paste it it pastes the complete image – not just the box around the selection, cause that wasn’t showing up at all but the complete image… :[
can you help me solve this problem? (:
oh, and i have PF 6.5.1
Thank you !
Hi Jeff !
This is great.
Thanks.