How to make a silhouette from an image

[ClareLou]

Hello Gurus,

I need some help in making a silhouette of a Dodo bird. It needs to be a really simple image that will eventually become part of a logo.

I have been watching a ton of youtube videos and my eyes kind of hurt, not to mention my brain, but I just can't get the finish to look professional enough.

I would love for someone to tell me how I can do this. I want to learn. Right now, I don't seem to be able to separate the image of the bird from the background without ending up with a jagged edge.

I've attached the original image I was trying to use, as well as my attempt in PS and some examples of the type of style I want to achieve.

This is my first real post here, so I look forward to hearing back from someone and hopefully learning something new

thanks!

Clare

 

[Tom Mann]

Unfortunately, I don't have time to put together a detailed tutorial for you at the moment, but to give you a quick heads-up, the bottom line is that for shapes this simple, by far, your best bet is to learn how to use Photoshop's pen tool.

With this skill you will be able to quickly (yes, manually) outline simple shapes like the one in your PSD file in what is called a "vector" form.

This can be scaled to literally *any* size you need, completely without softness, jaggedness, pixelation or any other forms of edge artifacts, even though you are starting with a very small image, only a few hundred pixels on a side.

Once you have a vector "path", you can do all sorts of useful things to it including filling it with gray gradients (if you want yours to be like the original), "stroking" the outline with a line of any thickness, color, etc. you want. If your final goal is nothing more than an outline, then just fill the vector path with black and you are done.

Till I or someone else has the time to look up some nice tutorials for you, I suggest you Google terms like {photoshop tutorial pen tool}, {photoshop tutorial stroking a path}, {photoshop tutorial filling a path}, etc.

Sorry I can't be more help at the moment, but I'll look back in on this thread very late tonight or early tomorrow morning, and if no one else jumped in to help, I can find some nice tutorials for you and walk you through some of these concepts.

Cheers,

Tom M

 

[Tom Mann]

You are in luck! By sheer luck, I just happened to notice that my fellow moderator, IamSam, just put together a nice collection of tutorials on the use of the pen tool for use in a different thread. They are listed in this post:
https://www.photoshopgurus.com/foru...arts-image-post1533727293.html#post1533727293

Why don't you start with these.

Tom M

PS - Thank you, Sam!

 

[Tom Mann]

PPS - Notice Sam's comment a bit further down that thread:
"...I always advise anyone who asks, the one and only tool you should master first is the Pen Tool. Good luck...."

 

[MrToM]

Here's how I would do it...

1.43 No Audio.

Note at approx 1.00 I hit the 'Delete' key to remove the white background.
Just after that I Click the Layer THUMBNAIL whilst HOLDING Ctrl....to select the remaining pixels.
(Alternatively you could 'Invert' the selction)

It may not be obvious in the video.

Regards.
MrToM.

 

[Tom Mann]

A humorous and completely off-topic note: When I hit the play button on MrTom's video, I nearly jumped out of my chair and eventually had quite a chuckle when I saw Emmylou Harris singing her sweet little heart out right here on our forum:



Then in the finest tradition of conspiracy thinkers, I noticed that the video was filmed in London ... and what country is MrTom from? Huh? Huh? ;-)

Fortunately or unfortunately, I'm not quite sure which, when I reloaded the page MrTom's video dutifully appeared in place of the vastly more photogenic Emmylou.

OK, enough of the silliness. Back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Tom M

 

[dv8_fx]

Then in the finest tradition of conspiracy thinkers, I noticed that the video was filmed in London ... and what country is MrTom from? Huh? Huh? ;-)

Tom M

According to his Scotland Yard dossier... he's somewhere in Warwickshire, England.... and that his penguins are also known to cause video viewing hooliganism.

.... now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

 

[Tom Mann]

In case the OP is wondering how to decide between the two very different methods suggested in this thread, the primary difference is that the pen method is scalable to any size, and I mean, "ANY", including billboard sized, and it will always produce absolutely beautiful, smooth edges. However, if you have not used the pen tool before, there is a reasonable learning curve to become proficient with it.

In contrast, MrToM's method is great if you need something fast and of the same size (in pixels) or smaller. However, it will likely produce either jaggy or fuzzy edges, depending on just how you do things. In addition, if there is a bump or other problem on the original artwork, this method will reproduce it perfectly, and it will need to be cleaned up manually. Although I use the method suggested by MrToM all the time, I typically only use it when I have a much larger image with edges that have a lot of detail (eg, you want every feather on the dodo to be visible even in silhouette), not when you want to get rid of that detail and give your final product smooth edges.

There are several other commonly used ways to to his, as well (eg, Adobe Illustrator's Image Trace function, hybrid methods, using the "refine edge" tool, etc. ) but let's see if the OP comes back to this thread and what she thinks.

Cheers,

Tom M (not to be confused with MrToM, LOL).