copying selection marquee without contents

[Stuart Noble]

A little project I was trying to figure out for my grand daughter. Is it possible to trace something within, say, a photo, and paste the outline (without the contents) as a new image? I've tried simply drawing round it freehand using paint as object, but the lasso tool allows more fine tuning. So, I've got a nice tight selection marquee, but how do I convert that to a line drawing? Am I missing something obvious, or is there a workaround?
Any help appreciated

[Ron P.]

Welcome to the forums Stewart,

It can be done with a few steps.

1. Using the sample image provided in PI of the fighter jet, I first used the magic wand tool to select all the background. Once that is done the selection was inverted, so only the Jet was selected.
2. Right-click on the selection, and choose Convert to Object.
3. Go to Effect>Creative>Paint on Edges, to get the Jet outlined.
4. Go to the Layers manger select the background layer, then fill the background layer with white.
5. Go to your Object and Fill it with white, or whatever color you want. This replaces the image color.
6. Now you can fill your object with the color of your liking.
7. Right-click on your object, select Copy.
8. Go to the image you want to paste your object into, select Edit>Paste as Object.

Here's some screenshots of the process. I think this is what you're wanting to do.

main photo.jpg (24.75 KiB) Viewed 2898 times

selected object.jpg (89.42 KiB) Viewed 2898 times

poe_whitebckgrd.jpg (31.84 KiB) Viewed 2898 times

obj_gradpaint.jpg (110.36 KiB) Viewed 2898 times

final result.jpg (89.71 KiB) Viewed 2898 times

[Stuart Noble]

Ron, I can't believe the trouble you've gone to in answering this!! I really am most grateful. I'll go through it later today, but I have very confidence in your solution. Certainly is a steep learning curve