Wednesday, November 17, 2010

10 Minute, $10 DIY Photoshop Silhouettes

I was feeling a bit crafty today!  After hanging out in the Doctor's office with the boys all morning, I decided we needed a fun  project.  Plus I have been wanting to hang silhouettes of my cutie pies for a while.  Now when I get crafty, I know I have to be quick, but a bunch of the DIY Silhouette blog explanations involved too many steps with cutting and paint and other things I didn't have time for!!  So I came up with this quick and easy way to get a silhouette in photoshop.

Here's the tutorial...

Start with a photo that shows a great silhouette.  I purposely set my camera setting to be dark so I could trace the outline easier.  Open your image in PS



Grab the quick selection tool and select the "head" portion you want to silhouette

There are many ways to do this next step.  I simply went into Hue/Saturation (control U) and scrolled the "lightness slider" all the way to the left to -100

This completely darkens the area within the quick selection

From there I created a copy of JUST the selection

I then opened a new 5x7 layout.  This was the size of my frame opening... you can customize your settings depending upon your need

I pasted my "selected" area and WAHLAH my silhouette is DONE and READY TO PRINT.  That was easy.  I printed my finaly silhouettes on bright white cardstock and framed them in black oval frames I bought for $5 each.

And I love how they turned out!!

It makes the perfect addition to this wall collage.  Now that was 10 minutes and 10 dollars well spent!!

2 comments:

Amber Henrie said...

Linz this is awesome! I really need to learn Photoshop again, but no time.

Brandi said...

Love this! can't wait to try it when I have some free time again, someday, hopefully. :)