To make a professional quality silhouette, you'll need to take a little time to effectively select the object you're silhouetting. Since some of these techniques require deleting or altering the original image, it is best to just duplicate the layer now and leave the original with it's little padlock, preventing you from ruining it.


To duplicate a layer, simply right-click it in the layers panel, then select "Duplicate Layer..."

, The Pen tool is, in many ways, Photoshop's most powerful too, though it takes getting used to. Select it from the menu, or press P, then click to create little points around your outline. When you complete the entire selection, you'll have a "Path," or solid line around your entire image. When done, simply right-click on the path and choose "Make Selection."


If you're working with a very curvy shape, try the "Free Form Pen Tool," found by clicking and holding the Pen Tool in the toolbox.
The pen tool is perfectly precise, but only if you know how to handle it. Take some time to experiment with it, especially with curves. It will trace the best shape for you, with practice.
 For example, say you've got a woman standing against a mostly blue sky, and you want to silhouette her. Instead of selecting her, you can select the sky behind her, removing it from the layer. Simply use the Magic Wand to select the background, the delete it away to leave just the silhouetted object.


Change the tolerance at the top bar to make the Wand more or less precise. A higher number (75-100) selected a wider range of colors while a low tolerance (like 1-10) will only select very similarly colored pixels., The most intuitive tools for creating selections, these generally require a steady hand and some patience, though they are easy to use. For all of them, simply click and drag around the object with your tool to create a selection. You can add more to a selection by holding Ctrl/Cmd when you click, or subtract from a selection by holding Alt/Opt.



Quick Selection: Looks like a paintbrush with a circular dotted line around the brush. This object selects everything roughly the same color or clarity, following the edges of shapes.

Lasso Tools: You have a lot of options here, each of which requires you click the mouse, then manually trace out the object. Clicking again creates an anchor point while completing the circle or shape ends the section.

Shaped Selections: Looks like a dotted square, but you can click and hold it for more shapes. This simply allows you to easy create geometric shaped selection. When used with Ctrl/Cmd or Alt/Opt, a good way to add or subtract little bits from the selection to refine it.
 If you have an isolated object you want to silhouette, and it's already in its own dedicated layer, Photoshop will trace it for you. Simple hold the Ctrl or ⌘ Cmd key and click the little picture of the layer -- your selection edge will appear automatically., This menu is a powerful tool to make subtle changes to your selection. Open it up through "Selection" → "Refine Edge." From there, you have a variety of options:



Radius: Allows you to shrink the edge of the selection.

Smooth: Rounds and smooths out points and corners.

Feather: Blurs the edges of everything.

Contrast: Makes the selection more pointed and sharp -- the inverse of "smoothing."

Shift Edge: Grows or shrinks the selection by percentage.
Duplicate your original image layer to get a spare copy for your silhouette.
Use the Pen Tool (P) for the most exact, perfect outlines to make silhouettes from.
Use the Magic Wand (W) tool to separate a simple 1-2 color background.
Use the remaining selection tools to trace out simple objects.
Ctrl-Click on a layer from the layers menu to automatically select it.
Use "Refine Edge" to get the perfect selection.
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