{"id":1358,"date":"2021-04-07T16:07:12","date_gmt":"2021-04-07T23:07:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/marketing\/?p=1358"},"modified":"2021-04-07T16:07:16","modified_gmt":"2021-04-07T23:07:16","slug":"cutting-out-and-layering-subjects-from-photos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/marketing\/2021\/04\/07\/cutting-out-and-layering-subjects-from-photos\/","title":{"rendered":"Cutting Out and Layering Subjects from Photos"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"580\" height=\"327\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/YHkm0EylIOc?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Sometimes your design might call for the subject of your image to be cut out or layered: For example, Oregon State&#8217;s branding features contextual graphics, which can be integrated with your photos so they look like they&#8217;re behind the subject, or behind mountains, things like that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;ll show two methods today. One in photoshop that takes a lot more steps but is more precise, and another in Indesign that is quick but less precise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The best and most precise way is to make a duplicate of your photo with a transparent background. I&#8217;ll start with opening photoshop.<br>-I&#8217;m using Photoshop 2021, and they&#8217;ve made it very easy to select your subject, as long as you don&#8217;t mind going in after to fix their mistakes.<br>-Go to Select&gt;Subject and let it work its magic<br>-It did a pretty good job of guessing, so lets first refine the edge so it doesn&#8217;t have a harsh cut line<br>-Go to Select&gt;modify&gt;expand, and I like to use 2px<br>-Again, Select&gt;modify&gt;feather, and again 2 px. This gives it a softer outline so it&#8217;s not such a harsh cutout.<br>-At the bottom of the layers panel, select this black square with a circle to create a mask from our outline. This doesn&#8217;t delete anything, so if we make mistakes we don&#8217;t have to restart from scratch<br>-There&#8217;s some background that got included by accident, so let&#8217;s fix those<br>-Select the mask, make sure the color selected is white, and select the eraser tool<br>-Erase the bits of background that were included.<br>-Use the brush tool to bring back the bits of benny that were left out of the mask.<br>-Tip: Right click&gt;disable layer mask to show the background again, and in Channels click the eye next to the mask to make it easier to see what needs fixed.<br>-When it&#8217;s where you like it, save as either a new Photoshop file or PNG, as those hold the transparency. A JPG will just fill in your transparent areas with white.<br>-Add both your original image and the one you just edited, add your contextual graphic and arrange accordingly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Next we&#8217;ll use just InDesign with the pen tool.<br>-Insert your photo, decide where you want the contextual graphics to go<br>-select pen tool, begin going around the outline of your subject<br>-Close the shape<br>-With the selection tool, select the image and copy<br>-right click the new shape you just created, and paste into<br>-Add your contextual graphic and arrange accordingly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And there you have it, hopefully one of these methods works well for you and gives you more freedom to make awesome designs. Thanks and good luck.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sometimes your design might call for the subject of your image to be cut out or layered, here are two methods to do that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8592,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160835,1356251,160871],"tags":[1356257,1356254,242960,242800,1356256,1356255,1356258,3504,1356260,1356259],"class_list":["post-1358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adobe-indesign","category-adobe-photoshop","category-tips-and-tutorials","tag-background","tag-cut","tag-illustrator","tag-indesign","tag-layer","tag-mask","tag-pen","tag-photo","tag-transparency","tag-transparent"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3JgyD-lU","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8592"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1358"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1358\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1359,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1358\/revisions\/1359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}