To contour-cut a subject on Adobe Photoshop you can use the dedicated automatic function (available from the 2020 version of Photoshop) which uses artificial intelligence (AI) to recognize and automatically select the subjects in the photos.

At first import to Photoshop the image you want to contour-cut by selecting “Open” from the “File” menu. Next, make sure that the level of the image you want to act on is selected, open the “Help” menu and select “Photoshop Help”. In the box that opens, first click on “Quick Actions”, on the item “Remove background” and then click on the button “Apply”.

At this point, as you will notice, the automatic function removes the background of the photo. If there are burrs you can fix them manually using the “Quick Mask” function of Photoshop. By activating the tool “brush” from the toolbar on the left you can “color” the items you want to remove; with the white color passing on the photo, Instead, you will be able to make visible elements that were automatically hidden by the AI-based discount, be they objects or people.

After you have “colored” the subjects to be printed (the selected parts will assume a red color), try to perfect the selection by activating the white color in the palette and “bleaching” the portions of photos to be excluded from the selection. For example, a smudge on an edge, an empty space between arms and body, the space between the hair and so on.

To do these perfect jobs, increase the zoom level of the image (using the key combination Ctrl+[+] on Windows or cmd+[+] on macos) and decrease the size of the brush. At this point, click on the “Improve Edge” button on the top right and check if the selection is accurate.

Most likely there will be some smudges and/or badly selected parts that will need to be fixed with the selection tools included in Photoshop. To achieve an optimal result we recommend trying various combinations until you find the one that looks more precise and natural.

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