Photoshop Tips: How to Create a Clipping Path on an Image
Step 1: Open Your Image in Photoshop
Step 2: Select the Polygon Lasso Tool
Step 3: Point by point, click your away around the object you are trying to put the clipping path on. In this case it is the girl and the tree.
Note: when you have gone all the way around the object your will see a moving dotted line moving around the selection. This is good.
Step 4: Go to your Path window. There is a little circle with an arrow pointing to the right. Click it. Select Make Work Path.
Step 5: A small box will pop up. Set the tollerance to .5 (The larger the number, the less acurate the clipping path will be)
Step 6: Go back to your Path window and select Save Path
Step 7: Another box will pop up. Give the Path a name. It is good for multiple paths. Usually I just leave it Path 1
Step 8: Go back to the Path window. Select Clipping Path
Step 9: Choose the path you want the Clipping Path to be. You can set the Flatness, but I usuallt leave it blank.
Now you can import that image into InDesign, Quark and many other programs and place an image, color or anything else you like behind it. See the pink below.
July 29th, 2007 at 7:19 am
Thanks for the informative article with images.
It is obvious that, Clipping Path does not allow shading since its vector lines are hard and smooth. Thats why hair masking is impossible with Clipping Path only.
However, your clipping path outlining in this article is very nice.