Photoshop Shapes: Create Your Own Photoshop Custom Shapes

Step 9: Subtract Any Remaining Details From The Shape Using The Pen Tool

I'm going to switch back to my Pen Tool at this point because I have a few more details I want to add to my shape that I won't be able to select with the Ellipse Tool.

I want to add his mouth to the shape, as well as his bow tie, so with my Pen Tool selected and the "Subtract from shape area" option still selected in the Options Bar, I'm simply going to trace around his mouth and bow tie to subtract them from my initial gingerbread man shape.

Here, we can see the paths I've drawn around them, along with the original gingerbread man image showing through the holes I've created:

Let's finish off our gingerbread man shape by subtracting those squiggly rows of icing sugar from his arms and legs. Again, I'll use the Pen Tool for this. Here, I'm drawing a path around the icing sugar along his left arm, and we can see the shape of the icing sugar being cut out of the initial shape as I go:

I'll finish tracing around this one, and then trace around the other three as well until all four rows of icing sugar have been subtracted from my initial shape:

If we look again at the shape layer's thumbnail in the Layers palette, we can see more clearly that all four rows of icing sugar, along with his eyes, mouth, bow tie, and buttons, have now been cut out of the shape:

At this point, I'd say the gingerbread man shape is complete! We've used the Pen Tool to trace around the outside of him, creating our initial shape, and then we used a combination of the Pen Tool and the Ellipse Tool, along with the "Subtract from shape area" option, to cut out all the smaller details in the shape.

Step 10: Increase The Opacity Of The Shape Layer Back To 100%

Now that we're done tracing around the different parts of our object, we no longer need to see the original image through the shape, so go back to the Opacity option in the top right corner of the Layers palette and set the opacity value back to 100%:

I'm also going to hide my Background layer temporarily by clicking on its Layer Visibility icon (the "eyeball" icon) so we can see just the shape by itself against a transparent background. You don't have to hide your Background layer if you don't want to. I'm only doing this to make it easier for us to see the shape itself:

With my original image on the Background layer now hidden and the opacity value of my shape layer set back to 100%, here's the gingerbread man shape I've created:

After all that work, we have our shape! We're not done yet though. We still need to define it as a Custom Shape, and we'll see how to do that next!