How To Cut An Object In Photoshop Using Polygon Lasso Tool
July 28, 2009 | Thoughts & Words By Sneh Roy | 17 Comments
Didn’t you always want to cut out a picture of your friend from a family photo and place it next to a gorgeous woman in a photo, shot in an exotic locale, just to give his wife a great big scare? What’s wrong with you? You can’t do that to your best friend! Well, you can threaten him with that so he’ll be your slave for life. But for that, you need to master this simple technique. Today I will show you how to cut out an object from a photograph or rather how to cut away a busy background from a photograph to retrieve just the object. And we will use the very easy and very handy Polygon Lasso Tool.
I am going to use a picture of the much loved Purple Cow. The purple cow in this picture is standing against a dull looking wall in my living room. I am going to attempt to cut out the background and put a more colorful, vibrant and clean background in place.
Step 1. Select the "Polygon Lasso Tool" from the toolbar as shown in the picture. Start clicking over the border of the object at very short intervals, trying to stay on the border even in tiny nooks and crannies. You may zoom the picture, so you can see where you are clicking, better.
Step 2. When you reach the other end of the cow at the bottom, drag your tool across the bottom and click on the first clicked point on the left to close the selection. Your cow is now selected. Go to Select>>Inverse. Now your background is selected. If you notice in the "Layers" panel, your picture is a locked Background. Double click on the "Background" layer and a small window will open up. Name the Layer "Purple Cow", which is what you will now see in the Layers panel. Click on the little "note" icon at the bottom of the Layers panel to "Create A New Layer". Drag the new layer below the "Purple Cow" layer. [There is no method to my madness really, sometimes I like to make things complicated for no particular reason]
Step 3. Now click on the "Purple Cow" layer in the Layers panel. Go to Edit>>Clear. Voila! Your dull background is gone, leaving only the cow in place.
Step 4. The "Selection" is still visible in the image at this point. Go to Select>>Inverse. This will just select your cow. Now Go to Select>>Refine Edge. In the box that pops up, I have used these numbers 1.0, 0, 2, 1.0, 0. You can of course experiment with your own settings depending on how much or little you want to refine the edges so they are smooth and not jagged. Once you are happy, click inside the picture to disable the selection.
Step 5. Now click on the layer immediately below the purple cow layer. I created an extra layer [as seen below], but there is no need really. Fill this with a bright, solid color of your choice or even a pattern. You may even copy-paste another scene or picture here. The possibilities are endless. I have chosen a vibrant purple color to fill this layer. The purple cow now looks much happier sitting on a bright background. Let’s make her go "boing", after all she is a child’s punch toy!
A Word To The Wise : If you are pressed for time and don’t want to indulge in my glorious attempts at making this simple tutorial quite baffling, after you have your "cow selected" in Step 2, simply Copy-Paste her to wherever you want her to be. The only upside to my method is that, you get refined edges making your work appear cleaner and you continue changing backgrounds and scenes in the same file, keeping things tidier.
There are of course many more methods of cutting out an object in Photoshop neatly, but for now, this should suffice.
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Just a word of advice; the Polygon Lasso Tool isn’t really made for doing complex selections. The result could get clunky because you can only draw straight lines and modifying the selection isn’t really that easy.
It takes the same work using the Pen Tool, but you can get way more precise and edit your path afterwards. Once you learned the basic funtions you’ll trace images like that in no time!
Wittevrongel You are right of course, especially with the straight lines bit. But I’ve done complex selections using the Lasso Tool and the Pen Tool in the past numerous times and wanted to try out something different. This would of course not work on a very rounded object, which I failed to mention in the tutorial
Nothing wrong with mixing things up; the end result looks fine anyway!
Thanks for the tut!
Another method is to use a layer mask. Once you’ve made your selection round the object, click the layer mask icon in the layers palette – The selection will isolated, and the original image isn’t directly effected.
I don’t know If I said it already but …Great site…keep up the good work.
I read a lot of blogs on a daily basis and for the most part, people lack substance but, I just wanted to make a quick comment to say I’m glad I found your blog. Thanks, 
A definite great read….
Thanks BloggerDude! I appreciate the vote of confidence
hi sneh,
Its is good that you are contributing your time for the learners it should be appreciated and you are deserved to be appreciated, anyhow I have some problems for cutting hairy images do you know any teqnique otherthan using eraser tool. I would be glad if you can write a blog on that
What did you do to get the fill color in the layer underneath the cow to turn to purple? I was fine up until that step and then I got lost.
well she obviously either changed her forground colour n edit>> fill>>> foreground colour
or she used the paint bucket how could this loose u man LOL
nice blog, nice content, nice design, keep blogging and i wish you the best in your career
ossama´s last blog ..ossamaweb: Starting and Growing a Design Blog with Design Informer’s Jad Limcaco http://bit.ly/d3OQTx
Thx! U save my life.
I owe U :p
Thanks for the great tip! I love this tool now!
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Thanks for the clear advice on cutting the object.
I have 1 more question :How do I save the cut out picture without the blank background and the square around the object. Suppose I want to paste the cut out cow in a flyer but don’t want the squared form of a picture, I only want the silhouet and form of the cut out picture ?