Cutting PNGS

Tools: Photoshop 7+
Description: What exactly are PNGS? And how do you make them yourselves?

Since I'm thinking of using PNG's in my next layout. I thought I'd make a tutorial on how to make these lovely little pieces of imagery. This is gonna be a very short tutorial people, simply cause it's just...easy :)

As I do in basically ALL of my tutorials, I'm going to explain what in the world PNGS are. Here's an example:

This is the image I started off with: Original & what it looks like as a PNG:

Firstly (is that even a word?) open up the image in photoshop. File > Open

If you see a little lock by your image in the layers palette, just double click it and press ok and you'll be allowed to edit it.

When it's open, select the Lasso Tool then zoom in super-duper close with your navigator. When you're at 800%, drag the navigator thing so that it's bigger. See below.
Click

I know, huge image, but I had to make this tutorial longer somehow XD

Oh I forgot, to make the navigator menu bigger, just drag the little dots next to the mountain thing.

Before you start cutting, make a new layer in the background and fill it with a color that contrasts with the image you're trying to extract and the background of the image. This way, you'll be able to see all the different pixels and make the cleanest cut possible. I'm using white to cut out the flower.

After this, use your lasso and make a selection on the part that you DON'T want. Press delete on your keyboard and voila. Try to do only a LITTLE bit at a time, this way, if you mess up, you only have to go back.

To get an entire PNG, you just have to have a lot of patience and go around the whole image and select and delete.

To save it as a PNG, go to File > Save for Web and under preset, select PNG.

Told you it was easy...eww, this is probably the worst tutorial I've ever written. o_O

Tags: cutting, effect, pngs, transparent

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This entry was posted on Monday, December 22nd, 2008 at 8:12 PM and is filed under Photoshop. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.