How To Blackout An Image In Photoshop

Silhouettes add an artistic effect to photos. You tin can turn a photo into a graphic silhouette to add together drama, or simply make up for poor lighting in a fun and creative way. For this tutorial, we'll employ the Castor tool in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom to adjust the subject of a photo so it is in silhouette. Experience gratis to experiment with the photo provided with this tutorial, or use your own.

Silhouette of a man jumping over a post on the beach.

Highlight the person in the photo using the Brush tool with Car Mask enabled. Car Mask detects the edges of an object in an image by sampling the colors and tones where you start brushing. This volition aid y'all castor over the person without including unintended areas.

Choose the Brush tool and adjust the brush size using the Size slider in the Castor console. Or, use the shortcut keys — the left bracket key on your keyboard ([) to decrease brush size, or the right bracket primal (]) to increment it. In the Castor panel, click the triangle to the right of the Brush slider to view additional brush settings. Check Machine Mask, so printing O on your keyboard a few times until the red mask overlay appears and stays enabled, showing where yous have brushed. Set Feather to 0 to create a sharper brush for crisper edges. Increase the Menses to use the brush outcome more than quickly. Increase the Density to limit the transparency of the effect. And so, castor to paint a mask over the person.

Tip: Hold the spacebar as you move the mouse to pan to different parts of a zoomed-in image.

Man jumping is highlighted using the Brush tool with Auto Mask. Brush slider options are open to the right.

Use the edit sliders to darken the discipline and create a silhouette.

Press O to turn off the cherry-red mask overlay so you can see the effects your adjustments have. Arrange sliders to lower the Exposure, Highlights, Shadows, and Blacks.

Sample settings: Exposure: -4.00; Highlights: -100; Shadows: -100; Blacks: -100

Man's shape is darkened with the edit sliders to create a silhouette.

Y'all may demand to conform your silhouette if any areas you wanted brushed were not included with Car Mask enabled. Click the blueish pin where you started the aligning. Uncheck Motorcar Mask in the brush settings, and so brush the areas that need refining.

Tip: Mouse over the image and press O to display the blue pivot.

Some areas need retouching by unchecking Auto Mask and brushing the areas needing refining.

Y'all may also need to erase furnishings of the brush that were accidentally included with Automobile Mask enabled. Select the Eraser tool, with Motorcar Mask enabled, to brush over unintended adjustments.

Some areas need erasing by enabling Auto Mask and brushing the areas needing refining.

To edit a previous enhancement, click the blue pin related to the specific edit, and then adjust the sliders equally needed. Click the Prove/Hide Original toggle at the bottom of the screen. Or, use the shortcut key (/) on your keyboard at whatever signal to switch between the earlier and after views of the photo.

Tip: For more than detailed information on using the Castor tool, or other selective editing tools, check out the Make selective edits tutorial.

Left: Man with red jacket and jeans jumps over a post on the beach. Right: Man's shape is turned into a black silhouette.