Print and cut

[oc63rag]

I've already searched and haven't found the answer to this. I'm trying to take a picture of my son playing baseball, select just his body from the image, print the image of his body and then cut it out.

I'm working in Photoshop and Illustrator CS2, printing on an HP 5000PS and cutting on a Graphtec FC7000-160 with Cutting Master 2.

Is there an "easy" way to achieve this?

 

[gvgraphics]

Yes there is, it is called print it and then the exacto knife for the cut out! OK, I'm sure there are other ways but that would be your quickest.

 

[Fred Weiss]

Depends on what you call easy.

• Crop the photo in Photoshop and save it.
• Open the photo in Illustrator and use the Bezier pen tool to draw the vector cutpath.
• Print and cut.

To lay down the cutpath and touch it up afterwards, should be no more than 20 to 30 minutes with most photos.

 

[oc63rag]

Depends on what you call easy.

• Crop the photo in Photoshop and save it.
• Open the photo in Illustrator and use the Bezier pen tool to draw the vector cutpath.
• Print and cut.

To lay down the cutpath and touch it up afterwards, should be no more than 20 to 30 minutes with most photos.

LOL... I knew that was kind of a loaded question. Thanks for the reply. I'll try the steps tomorrow and let you know how it goes.

 

[oc63rag]

I must be really lame - I can't find a Bezier pen tool in Illy CS2.
Here's what I've done so far:
1. Opened the image in Photoshop
2. Outlined the image using magnetic lasso tool
3. Cropped the outline image and saved it as a new file
4. Opened the new file in Illustrator
This is where I'm stuck. I can't figure out how to lay down the cutpath. If I go to "Select All", I get a rectangle around the image.

 

[Fred Weiss]

The instructions I supplied you were tailored to using Illustrator for the path creation. The Bezier pen tool shares space with a few other related tools on a "flyout". See the attachment.

Silhouetting in Photoshop does not create a path. Using the magnetic lasso will tend to give you a very pixelated edge, so if you use it to create a path in Photoshop you will likely not be pleased with the edge quality for cutting. You would have been far better off, if you felt you wanted to do this in Photoshop, to use the Bezier pen tool in Photoshop and then export the path to Illustrator.

The quickest way to a happy ending will be to follow my original instructions using the Bezier pen tool in Illustrator.

 

[njsigns]

Here is what I usually do.

While you have the "selection" still around your image, you can click on the paths palette and make work path:



Then you can export the paths to Illustrator:



Then you can open that file in Illustrator and see your paths:



You can then import your picture into Illustrator and line it up with the "contour", save as an eps or what ever file type you need. I usually don't work in illustrator at all, I take a few more steps to get it into corel where I feel more comfortable. This method has worked for me quite often...

Gene

 

[njsigns]

Like Fred said above, the path's aren't always the cleanest. I usually do some node editing when I get the file where I finally want it. This was the "quick and dirty" method I've used at times.

Gene

 

[oc63rag]

Thanks for the replies guys. I'm still having a hard time with this (the X-acto knife is looking better and better). I followed Gene's steps and it was easier until I opened the file in Illy and I got a blank page - no paths, nothing. I need to figure this out.
The image I'm working on is about 50" tall and 36" wide. The pen tool was a killer trying to work around this big image. If it was straight lines it would be OK but a batter hitting a baseball has too many curves and irregular shapes.

 

[njsigns]

I followed Gene's steps and it was easier until I opened the file in Illy and I got a blank page - no paths, nothing. I need to figure this out.

In Illustrator, on the top menu, go to View> Outline. You can always drag across the screen with the selection tools too and it will select the object.

Gene

 

[The Dotted Line]

As njsigns said, the work path that comes in, exported from Photoshop, typically comes in with no color for the stroke or the fill. This meaning that you will see nothing unless you go to view it in outline form. You can also, upon opening it, do a Select All, and then change the stroke color from None which is the default to black or any color from the swatch palette.

Also, the default hot key for the Pen Tool is (p). Just press the letter P on your keyboard and that should automatically switch you to the Pen Tool. Others: V: solid arrow tool, S: scale tool, T: text tool, M: marquee shape tool, L: ellipse tool, R: rotate tool. If you work in Illustrator enough, these are invaluable hot keys.

Good luck with that path - and/or the X-acto knife!

James