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

Photoshop Tutorial for Beginners

How to Make a Clipping Path Video Tutorial Outline

  1. Pathing: Take your time and accurately apply all skills learned in the previous lessons. You are aiming to understand the shortcuts, anchor placement, using control handles and being highly detailed, speed comes later
  2. Clipping Path: Click on the Path in the Pen Tool Paths Palette. In the fly out menu and select Clipping Path, choose the Path in the drop down menu and leave the Flatness field blank. When Clipping has been applied to a Path the name in the Paths Palette will be bold.
  3. Save as JPG: This image can now be placed in InDesign or PowerPoint with no background
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 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

Pen Tool Photoshop Tutorials 9 - How to use Photoshop transparent background
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