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Photoshop Clipping Mask in Pen Tool Photoshop Tutorials 18: Pathing Curves to Clipping Mask

Photoshop Tutorial for Beginners

A Photoshop Clipping Mask is created from a Pen Tool Path, this object has a lot of curves which can add to the duration and complexity Cutting out. Watch the tutorial and download the exercise file to practice

Click here or the image below to download the exercise file

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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object and then save the path as a clipping path. This is a hard edge, I don’t need it to be a layer

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mask with a soft edge. It’s a good example for you to practice on, because it’s a lot of curves.

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Curves is where you can see where someone’s good at cutting out or not, because it really shows

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up some of the flaws of their path handling. So, I’ll go through this process and explain as I go.

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I should say, it’s a good habit to click on this and create a path straightaway.

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So, using the pathing formula that I’ve explained in earlier tutorials. You can see it left a gap

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here. So when I click, there’s a gap there, I click, fill in the gap. You can see there’s a slight gap.

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Click. Fill in the gap. Use the alt key to change direction. So you have a gap here. You can see

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the gap between the rubber band. This gap here, between the rubber band and the edge of the

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line. So put a point here, knowing that if I put a point there, it’s going to pop out the wrong

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direction. There’s a bit of a gap here, so I put a point here. And you can see, I filled in that gap

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here. Use the option key. Point there. I’ll just do it a little bit quicker.

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And see where I placed the line? It’s just inside.

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I don’t want to use really long control handles. See there it starts to get a bit long? If I put the

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point down here, it works, but what’s going to happen is it’s going to get harder and harder to

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move it. See how it’s pushing out here? And it’s pushing out there. That’s why it gets a lot

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harder to path. So, you don’t want to have long control handles like this.

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Keep them short, lots of points, put the anchor up here, and then position the anchor visual on

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the top of the screen, then work your way down.

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If you follow the pathing formula, you’ll have no problems at all. It is a bit difficult at first.

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Sometimes people put the control handles like this. They can’t really get the flow of how to

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move these control handles around. It’s just practice. It literally is going undo, put another one

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in, undo, until you get the right position and position these control handles- that gap there and

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that gap there the same.

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That’s all the practice is. Once you’ve got that bit down and you understand how that works, it

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literally is like riding a bike. And it’s the hardest part of pathing. It’s the reason a lot of people

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don’t path very well, because just to get over that little hurdle can be quite difficult for some

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people. Or they just don’t commit the time to practice.

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You can see, I don’t need to go back and fix any of these paths. Get it right the first time. Maybe

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that one is a bit in, so that’s where I’d drag it in. But, very rarely will I need to go back and fix it. It

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depends how fast I’m trying to go. But as you can see, if you go faster, you start to make

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mistakes. So I wasn’t going to put a point here. Starts to get a bit too hard to manage. Just put as

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many points as you need. As I said earlier, don’t worry about how many points you put down.

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It’s completely irrelevant.

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Should any ever have to change direction, use the alt key or option key when you actually get to

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a point that changes direction. I shouldn’t need to use it here. I need to use it here, where it

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changes direction. I would never use like here. I wouldn’t put a point a point there and then

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change direction like that. You can make it this sort of shape.

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So that’s quite obvious, but even if you have little ones like this, it will be noticeable. If you’re

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working on premium for a premium client, or you’re doing something that’s really important, or

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it’s for a poster, or maybe you’re doing it for a logo, you can’t have little points like that.

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And to be honest, in the long run, it’s actually a bit slower. You can see here, I overstretched

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with the control handle. It’s a bit long.

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There’s a good one for using the alt/option shortcut.

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Leave a gap there between the circle and the line.

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That is the trick to being fast at this process.

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So I’ve closed that path off, because I want to get this inside bit here. Don’t leave

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these bits right to the end, because it does sometimes become a bit hard to work out where all the

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bits were that you came across as you’re pathing around the outside. It’s just better to get them

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done as you come to them.

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So you know you put a point here and you have to come back to that point.

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You don’t want to be right on the edge there, because I’ll end up with a halo around this image.

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Especially being a clipping path it’s going to be a really sharp edge.

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The objective is to path this is one go and not have to come back and fix the path up.

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You just want to be right the first time.

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So now I can command click over that path to select it again. Click on that point. So as long as

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it’s setting to exclude overlapping shapes, I know these inside bits here will cut out. Always

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check that that’s on that setting there. If these inside bits don’t cut out for whatever reason, it’s

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because that setting has changed.

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Another inside bit. Command click to get off that path. So my hand hovers over the alt option

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and command key. That’s where my thumb is. I’m left handed, so I’m using the mouse with my

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right hand.

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And my left thumb shifts between the space bar and the command key, and the option key.

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It shifts between those three.

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So it’s literally left mouse click and drag. And my left hand is on the shortcuts.

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You don’t need to use a Wacom tablet for Clipping Paths. In fact, I personally prefer a mouse.

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Obviously, an object like this could have been wanded, the magic wand making a selection. But

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you might want this path for a logo. You might want to bring it into Illustrator. You might want

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to make an SVG file. There’s any number of reasons why you might want to have a path. You

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would never convert a selection to a path. That’s when you enter too many points. You might

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have RIP errors things like that. I go into more details about that on

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PenToolPhotoshop.com and further information about pathing and pen tool and paths.

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There. So, that’s the whole entire object cut out. And just visually look around a few different

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paths and make sure it’s cut out. So, there’s a path over there. Deselect it. Now, I want to check

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the path before I make it a clipping path. So command and then click on the path. Makes it a

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selection, then I press Q for the quick mask. This was covered earlier in the earlier tutorial. I can

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zoom in and I can just hover around and check the quality of the cut out. This is how I check it.

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Command I to invert. So what I’m doing is inverting the quick mask down here. I can see what

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bits I’ve cut off and see if there’s anything funny going on. I can make sure that I’ve cut out the

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inside bits here. Check the curve. You can see maybe this line here juts in a bit. So I make a note

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of that. It can’t really be fixed. Kind of maybe even come in a little bit. Sometime like this might

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be quite small anyways. That’s probably ultra precision. You’ll probably do a little bit less

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precision than that.

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Once you’re happy and it looks like a pretty good cut out. Press Q. Command D. Deselect the selection.

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Otherwise, I would have left this selection and clicked on here and added a mask. In my case, I

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just want to click on the path. Go up to here, choose clipping path. Select path one. Leave the

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flatness blank. If you want to know more about flatness, just visit PenToolPhotoshop.com

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We cover flatness there in detail. With that select path 1, hit okay, now the text goes slightly

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bolded. You can see it’s not bolded. Now it’s bolded. That’s a clipping path. That’s just a regular

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path. Whereas bolded now will be cut out. I can save this as a JPG file. Doesn’t matter what your

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settings are, this will be cut out.

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

Pen Tool Photoshop Tutorials 18 - How to use Photoshop transparent background
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