I was thinking of my childhood days and going to the local County Fair. And I remembered artisans who would cut out Silhouettes of Fair visitors from black construction paper. I have never seen a tutorial for one; so, here I am, creating something new… :)
This tutorial is my own creation. Any resemblance to any other tutorial is strictly coincidental.
You will need a lacey doily tube. Just in case you do not have one, or have not made any yourself, I am offering two that I have-- Heart and a Lacey Oval. Download them to a folder of your choice (just remember where you saved them). You can then open them in PSP and save then as a Tube.
Now, some of us (yours truly included) never like how we look in pictures, so I am using a photo of our "baby", Pepper, for this tutorial. The final result of the actual silhouette is above and at the end of this tutorial. But the steps will give you the same results.
Find a photo of whomever you want to make a silhouette of, preferably a side view, and open it up in PSP. Resize the image if necessary. I resized mine to 400X400. We will be resizing to a smaller size later.
NOTE: If your image is oblong, you can CROP it for just the face section. Then you can go to Image/Resize and enter the size that you prefer.
Right click on your image layer and Promote Background Layer. Since we will be working with LAYERS, SAVE as a pspimage. Highlight the Raster Layer and rename it SILHOUETTE.
Using the Freehand Tool
outline the head area. Make sure you outline part of the back and neck section, or all you will have is the head and neck and it will look odd.
Go to Selections/Invert then click your Delete key on your keyboard. This will remove the unwanted background area.
Go back to Selections/Invert. This will move the Marching Ants back around your image.
Change your Foreground color to BLACK. Then using the Flood Fill Tool, fill INSIDE your image with the black. Deselect (Selections/Select None).
You can save this as a TUBE at this point, if you wish.
Add a new Raster Layer and name this DOILY. For this tutorial, I am using the Heart Filigree. Click on the TUBE TOOL
and locate the doily that you would like to use. Since I am working with a canvas of 400, I scaled my tube to 175. Click on your canvas to load the doily.
Highlight the DOILY layer and drag it below the SILHOUETTE layer.
Now, your silhouette is a tad larger than your doily, but no worries. Click on the Deform Tool
, it will outline your black image. Click on the upper right NODE and drag it down and towards the center till it is about the size you want. Then click anywhere inside of the Deform square and position your image in the center of your doily. If you need to adjust the size larger or smaller, now is the time to do it.
Click on the Mover Tool
, to deactivate the Deform Tool.
Now you can Merge/Merge Visible, resize your image and save as a gif at this point.
Now you have an Old Fashioned Silhouette like years gone by.
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But, I want to "personalize" mine, so I am going to add a new layer and add my pets' name.
Here is Pepper added to the "family" Silhouette.
I hope you enjoyed this tutorial.