How to Make an Outline in Photoshop

Making an outline in Photoshop is a useful skill that involves the application of several important Photoshop capabilities. These capabilities can be used not only to make outlines but can be employed to accomplish many other adjustments to digital files. Image outlines provide interesting graphical enhancements and are helpful for creating small files that still communicate important visual information. Following the steps below enables a user to quickly and easily make accurate outlines of virtually any image.

Difficulty:

Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need

• Adobe Photoshop CS2 or later
• Digital image opened in Photoshop

Outlining an Image

1. Set up the digital image in a Photoshop file with a separate white background layer as in Image 1.

2. Click the Magic Wand tool on the Photoshop toolbar and click any part of the image that is not to be included in the outline. To select areas that are not connected, the user can hold down the "Shift" button on the keyboard and click additional areas. See the example in Image 2. The water in the provided example is selected with the Magic Wand Tool, since it will not be included in the outline. Lakes are selected by holding down the shift key and clicking the lakes.

3. Click "Select" on the menu and then click the "Inverse" option as in Image 3. This will select the images to be included in the outline.

4. Click the "Background" layer shown in Image 4 to work with a different layer. Click the menu option "Edit," and then click "Copy." This will place a copy of the images to outline on the computer's electronic clipboard.

5. Click "Edit" on the menu bar and then click "Paste." This will create a white image in the shape of the items previously selected. In the example provided, the white map is visible as in Image 5.

6. Add a stroke to the new layer by clicking the "Layer" menu item, and then click "Stroke..." as in Image 6. The stroke function draws an outline completely around the image to create the outline.

7. Click the eye icon next to the map layer to remove it from visibility as in Image 7. The final outline is now visible on the screen.

Tips & Warnings

• Images with more complex backgrounds may require adjustments to the image levels to increase the contrast. Without this adjustment, removing the image background may have to be done manually.

References

• Photoshop Roadmap: Textures and Backgrounds Tutorial
• Photoshop Tutorials Plus: Making Backgrounds