Glass Transparent Background with Pen Tool Photoshop Tutorials 17: Path to Layer Mask & Tinted glass windows

Pen Tool Tutorial Captions

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Welcome to PEN TOOL Photoshop. In this tutorial, I’ll be using the pen tool to cut around this

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car. I’ll convert the path into a selection. And then, create a transparent background by using a

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layer mask. I’ll also be tinting this window so it’s not completely transparent. So, it will have a

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ghosting type effect. And I’ll also retain this blurred edge. So, I’ll go through now and cut out the

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car. And I’ll explain as I go, aspects of why I do certain things and the way I’m pathing.

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There you can see I’m using the pathing formula by placing a point on a curve, then balancing

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the distance between this point- this circle, this circle, and the line I’m cutting out. So, there’s the

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apex of the arc, drag the control handles up, and the distance here is the same as that distance

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there. I never, ever break these control handles like that, because you’ll end up with sharp points

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all the way around the image. So, a bad habit that people do sometimes is they’re not used to

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how this works and they go, “Okay, that works okay,” and this comes in. So they use the alt key

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to break that handle and they’re in the right direction again. Or they come back, hit alt on that,

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then keep going. It’s just amateur, basically. Don’t do that, essentially. It’s slow and it’s

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inaccurate. Once you learn the correct technique, you won’t need to work like that.

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Also, if you’re working on high end stuff, some clients will pick up on that.

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You can see here, I’m coming in on the edge a little bit. See how the white bleeds in? I want to

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put my path where the color’s most solid. I don’t want to put the point out here, because you’ll

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have some white bleeding in, a white halo around the image. So, it’s just the way it’s been

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photographed. Sometimes the light bleeds around the image. You would need fill cards

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things like that to stop that bleeding. But this is a small, macro sort of shot. Of a 1978 Porsche 911 Turbo Matchbox Car

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Now you can see, my path is right in where it’s solid. Where the feather stops, that’s where I

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want the path. That’s the advantage of using the pen tool, as opposed to trying to use the wand.

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You can wand this. It’s got a really nice white background. These little bumps and things, you

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might not want that. This is a pretty good example of where you might want a really nice sharp

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sort of shape.

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You can see, once again, I’ve put my anchor up here at the top of the position of the screen so

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the anchor’s right at the top, and I’ve got all this area here to work towards.

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So using the alt key option to change direction. So I get to this point here, change direction,

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option click. I didn’t want to put a point here, because it won’t be the correct shape. Well, it was

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the correct shape, but it’s a bit of a stretch. You’ve got to mess around with it. It’s quicker just to

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put more points down and not think about it.

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Don’t try thinking I might be able to get that in one go. It’s a waste of time, because by the time

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you think about trying to place it in the right spot, you may as well just put two points down in

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the right spot and you’re done, rather than trying to get it in one go.

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So like here, I could have got rid of these two points and just put one point all the way down

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here. But how do I know if I’m going to come across some detail? So I just keep putting points

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down. Don’t try to put less points. A lot of people say less points the better. It’s a completely

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useless statement, to be honest. It doesn’t serve any purpose. Just put as many points down as

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you need.

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You can see I’m never going back and fixing. I don’t need to go back and fix these anchors. I

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won’t go back on this one. Once I finish it, it’s finished. Sometimes it’s helpful to zoom back, when you

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get these little bits of details. See these little bumps? That’s part of the charm of this car. So,

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you want to retail that sort of detail. You don’t want to brush over it.

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So you can see the number plate pops out a little bit, so I’ve got a point there to emphasize

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that. This is premium level working. This is not just some small thing you want to do for the internet.

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You can always go back from this level. You can always go quicker and nastier. But it’s harder

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to get premium detail, that’s why I’m showing you the correct way. It’s up to your discretion

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whether you need to apply this precision or whether you can take a bit quicker.

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Okay, so that’s the first path. That’s the outside area. I click on the working path and save it as a

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path. Probably should have done that in the beginning. Better habit to save that in the beginning.

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Now, I want to cut out the window. So, it has to go on a separate path. So, that’s the first path

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there. And now, a path around the window. I’ll need a path for the feathered area and this area

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here is sharp. See how that’s a sharp area? So what I’ll do is I’ll path for the feathered area. Once

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again, I’m cutting out sort of halfway between the feather. And I’m not worried about up here.

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But I just want a path for the feathered area. I can label that Path window.

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And then what I want is another path of this sharp area here.

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Pretty much every point I put down, I drag the control handles out. I think those were the only point where I didn’t drag them out.

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So this is the shape for the sharp area.

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So I have my paths that I’ll be using to apply to the layer mask. Hold down command, click on

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path 1. In here where it says make selection, I’ve already set up my feather radius of 0.5. So you

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just go in here, hit okay, and that’s what makes the selection that setting. But from now on, I can

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just hold down command, click on path, and it makes it a selection. Everything to do with

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selection is under the select menu. And go down to modify feather. In this case, it’s a hard

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object, so I’m happy with just a 0.5 feather. So once I’ve got this selection, when I click on this

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button, add a mask, it will apply this selection as a mask.

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So, what masks are is whatever’s black, see the icon here, is transparent. Whatever’s white is

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what reveals the image. So if I hold down the option key or alt and click the mask, you can see

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the mask. Down here in the channels palette, I can click on the icon and it will show you,

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visually, what the mask looks like.

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So if I was to press B for the brush, and I put black in the foreground, you can see it removes the car

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See here I brushed into the mask. If I put white in the foreground, and

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brush, revealing the image again. If you want to disable the mask, hold down the shift key and

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click on it. If you save this file as a TIFF, it would still be there, it just wouldn’t be active. You

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wouldn’t have any background transparency. The reason I’m showing you that is because I want

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this window to be tinted. Before I do that, I’ll add in a tint.

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So, you can see it’s on a blue background. Command-click on that path. What I’m trying to

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gauge here is the kind of feather that I need. So, I can go select, feather, I’d say maybe 5 pixels.

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It’s just a guess, really. Press Q and see how that looks. Okay, so instead of adding a mask, now I

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want to put a tint in there. What I can do is put black in the foreground, go to edit, fill.

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I’m going to change this to the foreground color, and I want to set that as a tint. I don’t want

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100% black, because remember 100% was 100% transparent. This is a bit of guess work as to

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what tint you would want. I could make that maybe 50% transparency. That’s up to your

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discretion, what tint you would like. So command-D will deselect. And I’ve got that feather. It

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obviously goes out too far here. That’s why I’ve made that other path. So now when I command-

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click on that path, I can leave it at 0.5, because it’s quite a hard edge.

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I want to switch the colors. I want to make sure white is in the foreground, because white is the

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inside of the car, it won’t reveal the image, I want to remove this. So, it can’t be grey. I want

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white in the foreground, so I press shift-F5. It will bring up the fill option, rather than going into

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the menu. I have 100% white, the foreground color. Hit okay.

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Command-D, deselect.

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Now you can see the path wasn’t good enough, in this case.

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Select these points, you can move them. You can see how precise it has to actually be. This is quite

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a faint feather.

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Bring up the feather option. Shift-F6. I might feather it 2 pixels so there’s a

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slight feather on there. Fill again foreground color and deselect that.

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As you can see, it has a bit of a feather. You’d have to go back and forward until you’ve got that

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edge right. You can see there it’s a soft edge, and here’s slightly harder edge. But the window’s

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tinted. The background is a solid blue, that’s got a slight fade on it.

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Now, you would save this file as either a TIFF, or PNG file, or even a GIF, and you have a

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transparent background and this window would be slightly tinted. That was process of making a

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path, converting the path into a selection, applying that as a layer mask. And then, having

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separate paths for the windows. The outside area is completely black. And inside the window

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was a tint of black, and that’s what gives it a tint of transparency.

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I hope you enjoyed this tutorial, and I’ll see you in the next tutorial.