Figure 10-23.Figure 10-24.- Name the new channel. Double-click the new Alpha 1 item
at the bottom of the Channels panel and rename it something
clever like “Mask” (shown in Figure 10-23). Press Ctrl+Shift+S
(�-Shift-S) and save your image as My Calculated Hair.psd.
We’ll be using it in the next exercise, where we’ll work to se-
lect the body.
Using the Pen Tool to Select Smooth Contours
Many of the masking tools available in Photoshop rely on informa-
tion within the image to help make a selection, but the pen tool is an
exception. The pen tool allows you to draw meticulous, painstak-
ing outlines, one point and control handle at a time, much as you
would do in Adobe Illustrator. Although these outlines, or paths,
don’t have any pixel information associated with them, they can be
converted to selections that will help you create masks when there’s
not enough information for any other tool to be useful.
The pen tool isn’t easy to master, but it’s worth the effort to learn
how to draw around any object you’ll encounter in a digital image.
Case in point, our mask-in-progress that we began in the last exer-
cise. We’ll use the pen tool to trace the organic, smooth curves of
our model’s body, and add it to the successful job the Calculations
command did on her hair.
- Open your file from the previous exercise. Continue
working with your My Calculated Hair.psd image. If
you didn’t do the previous exercise, I’ve created a file in
the Lesson 10 folder called Calculated Hair.psd for you to work
with. We’ve got a great mask going for the hair, thanks to the
Calculations command, but Calculations did an abysmal job
on the arms and dress regions. - Display the Paths panel. When you use the pen tool to trace
an image, you’re leveraging the power of vectors in Photoshop.
A vector has no content of its own, but rather is a mathemati-
cally defined path that controls pixels but isn’t controlled by
them. These paths live inside their own panel, which is housed
by default with the Layers and Channels panels. Click the Paths
tab to bring the panel into view (or if the Paths tab isn’t avail-
able, choose Window→Paths). You’ll see in your panel (and in
Figure 10-24) that I’ve already created and saved a path called
Body Path (as well as a spare Deke’s version for your reference).
Click the Body Path entry in the panel to make it active.
Using the Pen Tool to Select Smooth Contours 355