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Photo Thursdays – Photo Cutouts

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You’ve probably seen it before — the perfect picture. You know, the cute couple kissing in front of the Eiffel Tower. Then you think to yourself, “Wait a minute, he’s way too cheap to ever take her to Paris. How’d they get that picture?” Answer: Photoshop. Or, in our case, PIXLR.com.
This tutorial will demonstrate how to replace the background on a picture to make it more exciting. I will use this photo of my brother and his fiance. It was a rather drab day and the photo was taken in the parking lot of a motorcycle dealership. But, it has all the makings of a cool photo — one Speed Racer would be proud of.
To get started, open Photoshop or PIXLR. Because not all users have Photoshop, I will do this demo in PIXLR. It works the same either way.
Open the picture you want to edit. Then, go to the Layers palette and double-click on the lock on the Background layer. This will change the Background Layer to Layer 0 and allow for editing.

Next, go to your Tools palette and select the Eraser tool. Yes, it looks like the classic pink erasers you used as a student.
Once the eraser is selected, go above the Tool palette to where it says “Brush” and click on the number (default:50). This will open the eraser brush options. Unlike Microsoft Paint — as wonderful as it wishes it was — you can choose just about any shape for your eraser. I would recommend using circles because they fit around objects better than other shapes. You will notice there are varying sizes of brushes. The higher the number, the bigger the brush. You can hover your mouse over your picture after selecting a size to see just how big the brush is. You will also notice there are solid brushes and brushes with fuzzy edges (called feathered edges in design-speak). You will use both, but start with a large, solid circle brush to eliminate the majority of the background. Once you have selected your brush, click on an unimportant part of your picture to get started.
With that large eraser brush, erase the background. Be careful not to go too fast or you might erase the important parts of the photo. As you erase, you will notice a white and gray checkered pattern appearing in the background. This will not actually be in the photo. It is there to represent a transparent background, not unlike the transparencies your teachers used on the overhead projectors.

Enjoying yourself? Good. This is the easy part. It’s about to get more difficult.
Once you’ve erased most of the background, it’s time to get up-close and personal with your photo. Using the Navigator palette, zoom in on the picture with the slider bar to the area you want to edit. You will notice your brush seems much larger now. It’s not, but you’re so much closer to the picture that it seems larger. If it feels too large, go back to the “Brush” options and select a smaller brush. Now, carefully erase along the edges of the important parts of the photo that you want to keep. Be very careful. It’s OK to erase a small part of the picture you want to keep, however don’t cut away too much or make your eraser marks jagged or this will be very obvious to the viewer.

TIP: A fast way to move around from one part of the picture to another is by pressing the “H” key on your keyboard. This selects the Hand tool, which lets you click and grab the picture and move it wherever you want. This works in most updated Web browsers. To go back to the erase tool, press the “E” button on your keyboard.
When you are erasing solid objects, like the motorcycle or clothes in this picture, it is OK to use the solid brush. When you get closer to skin and hair, you will want to use one of the feathered brushes. This will make it seem more natural and not so harsh. Play around with it to see what you like best. You can always undo any mistake you make.
WARNING: It is extremely difficult to cut out hair. Most of the time, it’s not worth catching every little fly-away. If it won’t look weird, go ahead and erase it. Nobody will know and your hair will look more well-kept. Also, this is a great way to trim off some of that excess arm fat. Don’t do too much or it will look obvious. Oh come on, don’t feel bad about doing it. You don’t really think all those actresses are naturally that perfectly built?
Once you have finished cutting out your picture, it will look something like this. You will notice the checkerboard pattern is very obvious. This means you have an empty background that can be replaced with, well, just about anything you want.

Next, find a background that you would like to put behind the picture you cut out.

WARNING: Make sure you find a background picture that is LARGE. At least as large, if not larger, than the photo you are editing. Otherwise, it will come up short and look stupid. Once you have found your background, go to File and Open your file.
Your background should open in its own window. Go to the Edit menu and select “Select All.” Go back to the Edit menu and select “Copy.”
Now, click over to the window that holds your original photo. Go to the Edit menu and select “Paste.” This will paste your background in front of your picture.
NOTE: It may paste too small. In this case, go to the Edit menu and select “Free Transform…” which will put a draggable box around the background image, which you can expand to the size you need.
If you look at the Layers palette, you have two layers: your background layer and the layer with your photo. They are in the wrong order. This is easy to fix. Grab the bottom layer and drag it above the top layer. This will put your cut-out image above the background image, which will achieve the effect you want.
You may notice there are remnants of the old background still hanging out. This is because it’s very difficult to perfectly erase everything the first time. You can see below that I didn’t get the hair. So, grab the eraser tool and erase. You will be able to easily see your progress now that you have your background in place.
The end result can be seen below. Looks cool, right? This process is not overly difficult, but it does take tremendous amounts of patience. The end result is usually well worth it.
Try it out yourself. I’d love to see what you come up with. Please share your results by uploading your replaced-background photos at my Flickr group share. (The Flickr group is also a good place to go if you want to see the crazy replaced background photos my husband made for me while we were dating.)Good luck with the editing.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  3. says

    This is awesome. Thanks for sharing. Your MIL stayed with me when she came for the funeral. She loves you guys so much!!!!! She is so proud of you and Seth and BOY of BOY is she proud of that little blondie of yours!!!! It was fun to see her and talk about memories about elementary school.

    Reply

  11. says

    Thanks for the tutorial…I had no idea you could do all this. I am still learning all the cool techy stuff and I always have to teach myself. Thanks girl!

    Reply

  12. says

    Happy Friday! My husband is a computer geek, I mean tech, so I am thankfully covered on this tutorial but I love your last post with the make-overs! I'm dropping by from 3F. Have a great one!

    Reply

  14. says

    cute final image.
    if you don't mind a recommendation – search for a tutorial on using the mask tool with the regular paint brushes. equally as easy as this, but you can erase and paint back in and keep adjusting, rather than the permanence of the erase tool.

    Reply

  15. says

    Wow, that's fascinating. I'm so boring with my photos – very much a point and shoot girl so it would be fun to get more creative. I didn't know about PIXLR.com so thanks for the tip.

    Reply

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