**(Earlier Versions May Be Used)

Background Information on Silhouettes

The art of silhouette cutting began in Europe in the early 1700's.  Before the French Revolution, silhouettists were hired as an amusement for the royal class.  The artist would attend many lavish balls and cut out the distinguished guest's profiles - Lords and Ladies, etc etc. capturing their latest fashions and very elaborate wigs.  The art of sihouette cutting reached its 'Golden Age' in the 1800's.  Many European sihouettists travelled to country fairs and towns capturing the profiles and hearts of countless thousands of ordinary folk.  Today, this art can now be achieved with the computer and software relatively easily.  The tutorial below will show you two ways of making wonderful images in silhouette that you can frame or hang as a picture.  This art is wonderful for images of your children as keepsakes.

Let's begin....

MODES and WORKSPACES

Versions 12 and X3 has the ability for customised workspace modes, choose your own personal settings or Full Edit providing you have all tools available for this tutorial.

Version 11 has five work modes.  You will see them listed in the My Workshop Menu.  For the purpose of this tutorial, ensure you are working in "Advanced Mode" in order for all tools to be available to you.

Version 10 has two work modes, Basic and Standard. Basic Mode features a simplified workspace with larger buttons and the most common functions, whereas,the Standard Mode displays all of the functions.  We will be using the Standard Mode in this tutorial.If you see Standard Mode faded out as shown, then this is the mode you are using.  If you change from standard to basic you will lose any presets you may have saved.

STEP 1

Open your photograph to your workspace - My photograph is of The Queen of Naples and is a copyright free image. 

Ctrl D - to duplicate your image.  Discard original and work on the duplicate. 

Zoom in on the head and shoulders

 

 

 

STEP 2

Extracting the image can be done several ways.  1. Lasso Tool, Masking and Cloning, or Extract Object.  It's entirely up to you which method you choose to extract part of the image. I prefer Extract Object for this project.

**If you are  using an earlier version of PhotoImpact prior to PhotoImpact 10, then you will have to use the lasso or mask to object as prior to version 10 there was no Extract Object.  If you do not know how to obtain an object by the mask method, please read this tutorial here - Photos to Clipart by Wishing Well Tutorials

If you wish to use the lasso tool, there's an excellent tutorial here - Selection Tools #1 - Standard and Lasso Tools by Digital-Fotofusion

Begin by clicking Object on the Menu Bar, choose Extract Object.  Depending on the size of your image will determine the size of brush you will use.  Start by drawing a boundary of your image.  You will notice that the brush is red in colour and the + sign is depressed.  If you make an error, click on the - and you can erase those error parts - when I say erase, it really brings back the image.  When you are happy with your selection, click on Next.

In the areas outside of the red tap with the extract object tool.  If you make an error, just go <back> and try again.

Your image will be extracted and a transparent background will show.  If your image isn't good enough, then go back and re-extract.

It's really not necessary to be perfect in this, as cleaning up afterward is the important part.

Now your image has dotted lines around it.  This can be dragged onto a new, white canvas.  There's no need to right click convert to object as it's already an object just by extracting.

 

 

STEP 3

Now comes the careful erasing.  Zoom in so you can see the edges clearly.  Choosing the eraser from the tool bar, begin to erase the residue from extracting.  What you are really doing is sculpturing the profile.  Defining the features and hair.

You will notice that I cut-in on the neckline and also shaped the lower part.

STEP 4

Highlight you object, Edit, Fill, Black - fill your image.  You may see some residue pixels, just erase these and tidy up around the image.  If some of the features appear sharp, you can round them off with the eraser.  Also, if there's any parts of your image that you can 'see through'....there maybe an odd pixel here or there that's not covered.  To fix this choose the paintbrush, size 3, black colour,  click on Paint as Object mode - and dab the uncovered areas.  When finished, click out of PAO, right click, select all objects and Merge as a Single Object.  Your image will now be completely covered.

 

STEP 5

The final step of the Silhouette Portrait is to frame it.  Go to Path Drawing Tool 

and from the Attribute Bar, choose from the drop-down box the sharp edge rectangle shape, colour black.

Deselect.  Path Drawing Tool, elipse shape, colour white and draw an oval.  

Centre the rectangle  by clicking the 'Centre Both' icon on the Attribute bar and do likewise with the white elipse shape.  

Go to the Layer Manager and select the extracted image and on the Attribute bar you'll see an arrow with a line above it, this is to bring your object right to the front.  

         

Centre your image on the white oval.  Deselect. 

Menu bar, Object, Select all objects, Merge as a Single Object.  Deselect.

To frame it,  Outline Drawing Tool 

Rectangle shape - Attribute bar - 3D.  From the Easy Palette choose a complimentary material, bump and or reflection.  Don't have the frame too heavy. 

You can of course reverse this and have a white image on a black background, it's all a matter of choice.

That's it for Silhouette Portraiture.  It's a wonderful way of using images of just about anything your imagination can come up with.  These images would make great gifts for family and friends.

I hope you've enjoyed learning the digital way of this very old art form of silhouette portraiture.

This image on the left was extracted by using the mask method and the image on the right was extracted by using the lasso tool and also a little painting with a small black brush

Silhouette Objects

STEP A

With your photograph open, right click and duplicate, discard the original.  It's safer to do this just in case you make an error with the original.

Go to the menu bar, adjust, threshold.  A window will open giving you two images side by side.  The original and a silhouette to the right.  Below you'll see the threshold level slider.  Move it left and right and see what happens to the black and white image.  Move to far left, the image almost disappears.  Move to the right and it blacks out.  So you have to move the slider until you have a silhouetted image that you want.  For the image above, my threshold was 116, but yours maybe more or less.

STEP B

Ensure the box for Output as selection is ticked.  Once happy with your selection, click OK.

STEP C

Your image will have green broken lines showing it's a selection. Next, right click, Invert, then right click again and Convert to Object.

STEP D

You can now safely drag the object to a blank canvas.  If there's residue, this can be erased.  You will have an images similar to the one shown above and below.  

You can use the images as objects for other projects, or make a new image by adding colour to the background or painting it.  If you do desire to paint, always do this in Edit Active Objects Only.  This way, only the selected object will be painted and you won't get paint on the background, so you can be selective of colour and where you paint.

That's it, have fun experimenting!

Site created and maintained by Maureen Eves-Lavis

Creative-Designs

Terms of use for this tutorial are simple....What you create using this tutorial is yours to do with as you please. A link back to this tut is appreciated but is not a requirement. The tutorial itself along with the images herein are copyrighted to me and all rights are reserved.

This document may not be translated, duplicated, redistributed or otherwise appropriated without permission.

COPYRIGHT: Maureen Eves-Lavis of ©Creative-Designs 2005 - 2008 Australia