Written By Steve Patterson

In this Adobe Photoshop tutorial, we're going to have some fun with silhouettes. By that, I mean we'll first create a basic silhouette using a technique that will give us the freedom to resize the silhouette as needed without any loss of image quality, and then we'll see how to fill the silhouette with a fun background to create interesting designs!

I'll be creating a couple of silhouettes for this tutorial. First, I'll use the boy from this photo:

I'll also create a silhouette from the girl in this photo:

I'll be filling both silhouettes with a background, and I'll be using the background we created in our recent Classic Starburst Background tutorial:

Of course, you can use whichever background you like. If you're creating this starburst background from our tutorial, you'll want to make sure you flatten the starburst image when you're done by going up to the Layer menu at the top of the screen and choosing Flatten Image so that the starburst image is on a single Background layer, which will make things easier later on. As I said though, feel free to use whichever background image you want.

Here's the final effect we'll be working towards:

Before we get started, I should mention that we'll be using Photoshop's Pen Tool to create our silhouettes, as opposed to something more basic like the Lasso Tool. There's a couple of reasons why. First, getting professional quality selections with the Lasso Tool is next to impossible, and silhouettes created with the Lasso Tool generally look sloppy and amateurish. The Pen Tool gives us all the precision we need to create great looking shapes.

The second reason for choosing the Pen Tool is that it allows us to create vector-based shapes which are resolution-independent, meaning we can resize them as needed without any loss in image quality. The Lasso Tool, on the other hand, creates pixel-based selections which are not resize-friendly. They tend to lose image quality after being resized, especially if you need to make them larger. So, for great looking silhouettes that won't lose image quality no matter what size we make them, we need the Pen Tool!

Having said that, if you're not familiar with how to use the Pen Tool in Photoshop, be sure to check out our Making Selections With The Pen Tool tutorial first, where you'll find everything you need to know to get up and running with what is, without question, the single best selection tool in all of Photoshop.

Let's get started!

Want a better way to learn? Download this tutorial as an easy to read, ready to print PDF eBook!

Step 1: Select The Pen Tool

Open the first image that you want to create a silhouette from (in my case, it's the photo of the boy) and select the Pen Tool from Photoshop's Tools palette:

You can also select the Pen Tool by pressing the letter P on your keyboard.

Step 2: Select The "Shape Layers" Option In The Options Bar

As soon as you select the Pen Tool, the Options Bar at the top of the screen will change to show options specifically for the Pen Tool. Over on the left of the Options Bar, you'll see a series of three icons - one that looks like a square with a smaller square in each corner (the Shape Layers icon), one that has the Pen Tool in the center of the square (the Paths icon), and one that's just a simple square (the Fill Pixels icon). These icons control what it is we're doing with the Pen Tool. We can use the Pen to draw vector-based shapes, we can use it to draw paths (which are basically shape outlines), and we can use it to draw pixel-based shapes. To create our silhouette, we want to draw vector-based shapes, so click on the Shape Layers icon in the Options Bar to select it:

Step 3: Reset Your Foreground And Background Colors If Needed

As I mentioned, we'll be filling our silhouette with a background image, but let's first create a more traditional black-filled silhouette. For that, we'll need our Foreground color set to black, which happens to be its default color (white is the default color for the Background color). If your Foreground color is already set to black, you can skip this step. If it's not, you can easily reset the Foreground and Background colors by pressing the letter D on your keyboard. If you look at your Foreground and Background color swatches near the bottom of the Tools palette, you'll see that black is now the Foreground color (the left swatch) and white is now the Background color (the right swatch):

Step 4: Draw An Outline Around The Person In The Photo

With the Pen Tool in hand, the Shape Layers option selected in the Options Bar and your Foreground color set to black, begin drawing an outline around the person in your photo, adding anchor points and moving direction handles as needed. Again, be sure to read through our Making Selections With The Pen Tool tutorial first if you need help using the Pen Tool.

You'll quickly notice a bit of a problem as you work your way around the person. Since we're drawing a shape, Photoshop is filling the area inside the outline with black as you create it, which in itself is not a problem except that it tends to block your view of what you're doing. Here we can see that I've started drawing an outline around the boy's head, but the solid black is completely blocking him from view as I work my way around him:

To get around this little problem, all we need to do is temporarily lower the opacity of our shape layer. If we look in our Layers palette, we can see that we now have two layers. Our photo is on the Background layer, and the shape we're drawing with the Pen Tool is on the shape layer, named "Shape 1", directly above it. The shape layer is currently selected (we know this because it's highlighted in blue), so go up to the Opacity option in the top right corner of the Layers palette and lower the opacity down to around 40% or so:

With the opacity of the shape lowered, we can now see through the solid black fill, which makes it much easier to see what we're doing:

Continue drawing your outline around the person with the Pen Tool. When you're done, go back to the Opacity option in the Layers palette and raise the opacity back to 100%. Here's my completed shape around the boy, filled with solid black. I now have my first silhouette: