AbsolutVision Stock Photo offers thousands of isolated pictures on white background with integrated clipping path (Photo Objects and Photo Characters collections). This function allows you to easily and quickly get rid of the background and therefore gives a complete new look to the picture with just a few clicks.
But, do you know how to use Adobe Photoshop® Clipping path efficiently ?
In this tutorial we will show you how…

What is a clipping path?

A clipping path is a vector path which allows part of an image to show while hiding the rest (usually its background) effectively rendering part of the image transparent. A clipping path in an image editing program is functionally equivalent to a mask in an illustration program. Usually it is used to “knock out” the background.

The task of manually doing clipping paths in Adobe Photoshop can be a tedious and time-consuming job. So, we made it for you with great attention to image detail on thousands of pictures in our Objects and Characters Collections … all of which give AbsolutVision Subscribers more time to be creative !
 

Thanks to the help of the integrated clipping path of our Objects and Characters Pictures Collections, you can create quickly stunning photo-montage.
 

How to remove the background?

Step 1.
Choose and download a picture from our Objects or Characters gallery (or look for this pictogram on the thumbnail pages).

Step 2
a) Bring the downloaded picture in Photoshop.
b) Display the “Paths” palette from the dropdown “Window” menu.
c) Select “Path 1” and make a selection by clicking on the small arrow on the up right corner of the palette.
d) Choose a feather radius of 0 pixel from the “Make Selection” window.

Step 3
a) Copy the selection. Choose Layer > New > “Layer via Copy” menu dropdown (Cmd+J on a Mac / Crtl+J on Windows)
b) Two layers are now displayed in the Layer palette (F7): “Background” and the copy with the isolated picture in “Layer 1”

Step 4a. For pictures with no shadow.
a) Delete “Background” layer by dragging it into the small trash can icon in the “Layer” palette
or
b) Apply a colour or a gradient in the “Background” layer.

Step 4b. For pictures with shadow.
Follow this step if the picture includes a shadow and you want to preserve it.
a) Convert “Background” layer to a layer by just double-clicking on the Background Layer in the Layers palette.
b) A dialog will appear with the default layer name “Layer 0”. You can leave it or name it “shadow”. Hit OK.
c) Insert a new layer between this layer (”Shadow” or “Layer 0″) and Layer 1 by clicking on the small arrow on the up right corner of the “Layers” palette (or Shift+Cmd+N on a Mac / Shift+Ctrl+N on Windows).
d) Set Mode to “Multiply” and leave opacity at 100%. Hit OK
e) Apply a colour or a gradient or insert a picture in this intermediate layer and the shadow will be preserved.

Cleanup

Step 5. Sometimes tiny white gaps will appear between the background and the picture. This can be fixed easily…
Defringing the layer can help. This command can be found in Layer> Matting> Defringe… Usually 1 pixel should be sufficient to eliminate these gaps.

And that’s it !

You can now save you file as a .psd or a .tif file, or flatten the artwork (Layer menu > Flatten image) and save it as .jpg or .png…