How to Make a Clipping Path. Pen Tool Photoshop Tutorials 09: Path to Clipping Path

Pen Tool Tutorial Captions

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Welcome to Pen Tool Photoshop
in this first tutorial we will be cutting

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out this shape
this is really an exercise for you to practice

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and hone in on all the skills you’ve learned
in the previous tutorials

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so I’ll be cutting out this whole shape
but I’ll be speeding up the video because

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it will take a while to cut out
I’ll include the Path, the final Path and

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how long it took me to cut out in the exercise
file

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so you can use as a reference file and you
can use the video as a reference so you can

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see where I placed anchors, and how I actually
cut this out

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So I wouldn’t use exactly where I placed
the anchor to follow yourself.

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So where I place an anchor is not the only
place you can place an anchor.

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So you know I could put a point here, put
an anchor here, or I could put an anchor here

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Stating out you might put the anchors closer
together

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So when you first start this path you put
the anchors closer together and but the time

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you finish this process and you get all the
way to here you should be starting to put

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the anchors further and further apart
So this shape is something that I used to

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get work experience kids to work on, so I
used to manage a Retouch department for a

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magazine company and I had a lot of work experience
students come through.

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The reason why I started that program was
to help people starting out in the industry,

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but for them to cut this object out allowed
me to give them so work where they could cut

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out images that were going into magazines.

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They did a crash course in the previous tutorials,
presented here and this shape here is something

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they would cut out.

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By the time they cut this out I would check
it and I would get them to fix things up and

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once I was happy with how they cut this shape
out, they were then essential ready to go

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and then cut out live images.

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I would then check those images and they were
fine, ready to be published.

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I will just now cut out this shape, and I’ll
speed up the video and you can just watch

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along or you can try yourself and refer back
to the video to see how I placed my anchors

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So that was a pretty long path as you can
see, that took pretty much about 15 minutes

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to cut out that whole thing
It’s something you would just take your

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time with
By the end of it you probably will get a sore

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hand, a sore wrist, it is quite a complex
sort of path, it’s quite time consuming,

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but what you end up with is a really precise
sharp path

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you see some areas, there was an area here
Around this sort of area, you have to zoom

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in
You know, so it’s not 100% precise, but

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this is pretty much how most paths will look,
you won’t have these points right on this

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line, it’s not what you’re aiming for,
you always come in a little bit, it would

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just take way too long, it’s not really
necessary, you just want to get the main part

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of the shape.

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If you did have to get it right on the line
it would just mean you would literally have

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to zoom in and it would probably take me twice
as long.

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The more accuracy you need the longer it will
take you to place these points

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But this sort of accuracy is exactly what
you’re aiming for, if you can achieve this

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level of detail then thats pretty much enough
for most jobs

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So you can see around here I had to zoom in
I wanted to see the pixels because there is

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a lot more detail, shorter paths, where as
when I came to this area here I zoomed out

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to this level
It’s longer straights of lines

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Here I wasn’t sure if it was a straight
line so i didn’t hold down the shift key

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but then I got to here and thought oh ok they’re
all straight lines so I held down the shift

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key
Over here you start to just put down a lot

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of little points, zoom right in, get a lot
more detail

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But I’ll include this Path in with the tutorial
file so you can see it

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and call it 15 minute path, that took 15 minutes
It’s not a race, take your time definitely

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But yeah if you can get to 15 minutes with
the same level of detail.

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The points don’t have to be in the exactly
same spot, but the same sort of level of detail,

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you are the equivalent of me who has been
doing it for 20 years

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So you can literally get to this level within
probably 3 or 4 hours, depending on how many

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images you practice on.

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There comes a point where you physically cannot
get any faster at pathing because you start

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to loose detail
So this is achievable and don’t skip over

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the Pen Tool, people say why don’t you just
wand it.

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Click a wand an you can cut it out that way,
thats not the point of the exercise.

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There are some cases in retouching where you
just have to use the Pen Tool, it just the

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best tool to use
So this is just an exercise

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It’s not about cutting this out, it’s
about an exercise in using the Pen Tool and

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how the Pen Tool is meant to be used
So it ways Path to Clipping Path, so I click

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on the Path, in here Clipping Path hit ok
So hope you enjoyed the tutorial and I’ll

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see you in the next tutorial where we will
start to cut out some actual images, these

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are all just exercises, then I start to show
you how to cut out proper pictures and explain

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the process
I’ll see you in the next tutorial