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Table Of Contents
Cutting objects out of photos
Using the drawing tools, it's easy to draw around shapes and cut them out of the background. You can
use any of the Line Drawing Tools to do this. Perhaps the easiest way is using the Shape Editor Tool
and draw a line around the edge of the shape you want to extract. Zoom into your photo and then:
In the Shape Editor Tool use a type of "connect the dots" technique of sequential clicks around
the shape, using more closely spaced clicks for detailed areas and fewer clicks for straight line or
gentle curved areas.
When you've gone around the object completely, close the line to be a solid shape by joining the
last segment to the first. This will create a filled shape, typically solid black.
You can now cut this shape out of the photo by selecting both the new mask shape, and the
photo (shift click on the photo in the Selector Tool) and select the menu option "Arrange" > "
Combine shapes" > "Intersect shapes".
Feather the results to blend the edge slightly, by dragging the feather slider on the top bar to one
or two pixels.
You can make further edits to the shape, using the Line Editing Tools, as the whole photo remains inside
the shape which acts just as a clipping mask.
In this example the cow has been given a floor shadow using the Shadow Tool
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