cut the crap: the easy way.

Welcome to the first edition of Cut the Crap or Cutting shit out or whatever I decide to call it at the time.
We're going to start out with the easy stuff and go from there. So today we are going to use the magical magic wand tool to cut our favorite band members out of their original backgrounds so we can put them in my basement a whorehouse whatever backgrounds we decide to use!

This tutorial is aimed at beginners, as in the
"I have never touched this program in my life wtf does this button do etc etc" kind of people. If you already know what brushes are and want to just skip all the fluff about how to right-click on something and want to just know how to cut shit out from a background, click here to get to the good stuff.

Also, a warning: this tutorial contains tons of sarcasm and should not be taken too seriously.

Click on the image to see it in full-size. Remember this when you're squinting to read the tiny text.

So first we're going to look for an image online. I found this wonderfully dirty picture of Tom at Freheit images. When I clicked on it, it let me full view the picture, which makes my job a lot easier.


After right clicking on the image you want to use and clicking "copy," open Photoshop and go to File -> New.

The neat thing about Photoshop is that if you copy an image and then create a new image, it will have the dimensions of the image that you copied already plugged in. Isn't that totally rad?
So when you click "okay" you will get a blank image. Like this:

I know, it's already pretty exciting, isn't it?


Press CTRL+V or go to Edit -> Paste. Suddenly a really sexy German boy in need of a hot shower and some lovin' appears out of nowhere! See? Proof that Photoshop performs miracles on a daily basis.


Before we start our super-easy cutting out method, we're going to get rid of this watermark that I just happened to notice here.

First let's hide the background layer, because it's white as default and so is our background, and we need to be able to see what we're erasing. Go to the layers palette and find the background layer (here's a hint: it should be called "background") and click the little box on the left side with the picture of the eye in it. That little button toggles the layer's visibility. Once you click on it, you make it disappear!


Select the eraser tool. It doesn't matter what settings there are, really, but here's mine:

You'll want a big brush, so change the number under "Master Diameter" in order to increase or decrease the size. You can type in your own number in the textbox, or you can click on the little pointer doohickey and drag it left or right.

Now click on that pesky watermark and drag your cursor around to erase it. You'll notice that this weird gray checkered pattern appears, like this:

That only means that your background is now transparent, which is exactly what we want. If you happen to save an image while the background is transparent, it will appear see-through.

Now we're actually going to remove the background! Click on the Magic Wand tool. (If you can't see the magic wand tool, right click on the quick selection tool.) Click on your background and the entire thing will be outlined in a blinking dotted line. This means that whole area within the outline is selected.


Go to Edit -> Cut or press the DELETE key.


Where all your white background used to be is now all grey checkered, so everything is transparent except for Tom.

Press CTRL+D or go to Select -> Deselect. Now your selection is no more!


Wait a second, here. Do I spy a spot that's not gray-and-white checkered? That's okay, all you have to do is select the magic wand tool and click on that little spot, then repeat what you just did three seconds ago.


There. Now Tom is all by himself, and no longer has that white background to keep him company. But he feels a little lonely, I think. Let's put him in a background of our choice!

I found this really awesome and free-to-use grass picture from here. After I right clicked on it and copied it, I selected the original background layer and pressed CTRL+V to paste it as my new background. It pasted as it's very own layer.

It was slightly too big and disproportionate, so I resized it by going to Edit -> Transform -> Scale. But something was still "off" about it.


The lush green grass looked just a bit too bright for my very unsaturated Tomi. By going to Image -> Adjustments -> Hue and Saturation, and lowering the saturation level, I got it to match a little better.


And here's our finished project! I hope this tutorial has helped you, if you have any problems or questions feel free to leave a comment. I'd also love to see your own creations if you'd like to share those as well. :)