Cut out images with a Pen tool

Open a picture in Photoshop, pick the Pen tool and make sure it’s set on Paths and Add to path area (+).

Here, I want to cut out the Stig from BBC’s Top Gear. If the subject in your picture is detailed and needs more precision to cut out, zoom in and out as you progress.

Make sure you’ve closed the path so it can be made into a selection. It is done when you connect the first and the last anchor point and it’s marked with a small circle near cursor. Fine tune and adjust the path.

Refine and smooth edges (add some more anchor points if you need them). If the space between two anchor points is too big, you can’t precisely control modifications. So adding one in the middle should correct that. Just practice.

Right click on the path, choose Make Selection… and click ok.

Copy and paste the selection to another image that you trying to modify.

You can save this selection as a shape. Go to Path palette. Select the path, then go to Edit / Define custom shape…, name it and click ok.

Open a new document in Photoshop and select Custom shape tool. In small browser, you’ll see saved shape.

Choose preferred color, select Fill pixels and click and drag on canvas to create your shape. If you want to maintain same proportions as the original selection had, hold down shift.

If you select Shape layers first and then create the shape, it’ll create a vector shape. The advantage of vector shape is that it won’t pixelate if you scale it up or down. Remember that you must rasterize the layer if you want to apply some effects (Layer / Rasterize / Layer).