Step 5: Create A New Blank Photoshop Document

Now that we've created our first silhouette, let's move it into its own document. First, we'll need to create a new Photoshop document, so go up to the File menu at the top of the screen and choose New, which brings up the New Document dialog box. I'll name my new document "Silhouettes", although naming new documents is completely optional. Choose whatever size you need for your document. For this tutorial, I'll create a 6x6 inch document and I'll set the Resolution to 300 pixels per inch, which is a standard resolution for professional quality printing. Make sure you choose White as your document's Background Contents:

Click OK to exit out of the dialog box when you're done, and the new document appears:

Step 6: Drag The Shape Layer Into The New Document

With both your original photo and the new blank document now open on your screen in their own separate document windows, click anywhere inside your original photo to select it, which will make it active. Then, go to the Layers palette, click on the shape layer which contains your silhouette and simply drag the layer into the new document:

Release your mouse button and your black-filled silhouette will appear inside the new document:

You can close out of the original photo's document window at this point, since we no longer need it. And now, if we look in the Layers palette once again, we can see that our shape layer has in fact been copied over to the new document and is sitting directly above the white-filled Background layer:

Step 7: Resize And Reposition The Silhouette With Free Transform

As I mentioned at the beginning of this tutorial, one of the main reasons why we used the Pen Tool to create our silhouette was because it allowed us to create our silhouette as a vector-based shape, and as a shape, we're free to resize it any way we want, making it as large or as small as we like, without any loss in image quality. Let's resize the silhouette using Photoshop's Free Transform command. With the shape layer selected in the Layers palette, press Ctrl+T (Win) / Command+T (Mac) to bring up the Free Transform box and handles around the silhouette. Hold down your Shift key to constrain the proportions of the silhouette so you don't distort the look of it and drag any of the corner handles to resize it. If you want to resize it from the center rather than from the corner, hold down your Alt (Win) / Option (Mac) key as you drag. You can also move the silhouette around inside the document by clicking anywhere inside the Free Transform box and dragging the shape around with your mouse. Just don't click on the small target icon in the center, otherwise you'll move the target icon, not the shape.

Here, I've made my silhouette larger and moved it into the top left corner of the document:

Press Enter (Win) / Return (Mac) when you're done to accept the transformation and exit out of the Free Transform command.

Step 8: Add Additional Silhouettes To The Document (Optional)

If you're using only one silhouette in your design, you can skip this step. I have a second silhouette that I want to add to my design, so I'll open up my second photo, which is the image of the girl:

Using the same steps as before, I'll select the Pen Tool from the Tools palette and draw an outline around the girl, lowering the opacity of the shape layer in the Layers palette to around 40% so I can see what I'm doing as I make my way around her:

When I'm done, I'll raise the opacity of the shape layer back to a full 100%. Here's my image with the silhouette of the girl now complete:

I need to drag this second silhouette into my main "Silhouettes" document, so with both document windows open on my screen, I'll click on the girl's photo to select it and make it active, then I'll click on the shape layer in the Layers palette and simply drag the layer into the "Silhouettes" document:

With my second silhouette now inside the main document, I'll close out of the girl's photo since I no longer need to have it open. If we look in my "Silhouettes" document now, we can see that the girl's silhouette has been added:

Just as I did before with the first silhouette, I'll press Ctrl+T (Win) / Command+T (Mac) to bring up Photoshop's Free Transform box and handles around my new silhouette and I'll drag out any of the corner handles to resize it, holding Shift as I drag to constrain the proportions of the shape and holding Alt (Win) / Option (Mac) as well to force the shape to resize from its center. I'll also drag the shape down towards the bottom right corner of the document while I'm at it:

I'll press Enter (Win) / Return (Mac) when I'm done to accept the transformation and exit out of the Free Transform command.

If I look in my Layers palette, I can see that I now have two shape layers sitting above the white-filled Background layer. The boy's silhouette is on the bottom shape layer and the girl's is on the top one:

Unfortunately, both shape layers are named "Shape 1", which is a bit confusing. I'm going to rename the layers by double-clicking directly on their names and typing in new names. I'll name the bottom shape layer "Boy" and the top one "Girl":