Thursday, August 20, 2009

How to cutout shapes for layouts in Photoshop

Hi! Here is a little tutorial on how to cutout shapes for your layouts in Photoshop. I hope that this tutorial is not too basic and will be helpful to some of you. I also hope that my instructions with screen shots will be helpful. Here we go...

Open a New File. Go to File, New Blank File and choose the following settings: transparent, 3600x3600, 300 resolution and click okay. This way you will have plenty of room to create the shape that you want for your layout and you can resize it if you need to.

Next choose the paper, photo or color for the background you want your shape to be and insert it into the new page you just opened.


Click on the Cookie Cutter Tool on the left hand side of screen and choose the shape you would like to use. I am going to use a star outline cutout for this tutorial and will be using it for a frame in my layout. Select the shape you would like to use and click on it.


Create your shape on your page with the background you have chosen for it and make it the size you would like it to be for your layout.


Next open a new page. Choose the background for your layout and drag your background to your new page.

Next move your shape you just made to your layout and add a shadow to it if you would like. Decorate your page with embellishments, journaling or whatever your heart desires and have fun!


Screen shot of shape with shadow:

I am adding a few more steps to this tutorial because I am making my layout for the tutorial into a quick page to share with all of you. Which you can download at the end of this tutorial.

The next steps are for the star frame I am making for the quick page.

Select the magic wand tool from the left hand side of the screen. Select the star shape layer.

Select the center of the star by placing the cursor in the center of the star and click on it. This will select the center of the star.


Next select the eraser tool on the left hand side of the screen and select the background layer.


Next erase the background from the center of the star and you are done. Now decorate with embellishments, journaling or whatever you would like.


I hope you liked this tutorial!

I made a quick page for all of you using the star frame I made for this tutorial. I used my new Sundance kit.

Here is the quick page I made. Hope you like it.

Click on the preview to download.
Thank you and have fun scrapping!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you so much for this Freebie. I want to let you know that I posted a link to your blog in Creative Busy Hands Scrapbook Freebies Search List, under the Page 10 post on Aug. 20, 2009. Thanks again.

Rose said...

Which photoshop version are you using? I have CS4 and don't know where the cookie cutter tool is. I found a custom shapes tool, is this the same thing?

The Nielsen Family said...

thanks for the tutorial, I'm getting invalid link on the QP though.