Cut and Paste Texturing Tutorial in Photoshop 7.0

In this tutorial you will learn how to cut out a section of an image for use on a TRS2004 object.

Note. The image used in this tutorial can be downloaded here.

1. Magic wand tool

The first thing we need to do is open the engine image available at the above link or another suitable file. Then we need to select the magic wand tool as shown in figure 1. To get the most amount of detail and the least amount of blue, set the "Magic Wand Tool" settings to a "Tolerance" of 20 and a make sure the "Anti-aliased" and "Contiguous" checkboxes are selected.

Figure 1 Magic wand tool

Figure 2 Magic wand tool settings

2. Selecting the engine

Now that the "Magic Wand Tool" has been configured click on blue area at the bottom of the image. You will notice that the entire blue area is not selected. The reason for this is that the background is not all the one shade of blue. If the "Tolerance" were to be increased then there would be more of the blue area selected however this also leads to details from the engine being selected as well.

Figure 3 Semi complete magic wand outline

To select the rest of the blue area hold down the "Shift " key and click on an unselected area of the blue. Continue selecting the blue areas until you have all the blue area selected that you want to remove. Once you have all the blue area selected press the Control-Shift-I or select "Inverse" from the "Select" menu. This will change the selection from the blue area to the engine.

Figure 4 Completed and inversed magic wand outline

3. Copying to another file

Once you have the selection inversed press Ctrl-C or select "Copy " from the "Edit" menu and then press Ctrl-N or select "New" from the file menu to create a new file. The dimensions should already match the size of the engine. You can ignore this step if you have already opened a file that you wish to paste the image to. Once you have the new file opened or have switched to the file you are pasting to, press Ctrl-V or select "Paste" from the "Edit" menu and the engine will be pasted to the file.

Figure 5 Engine in new location

Now you can paint around the image or behind it. This is especially useful for logos for the sides of locomotives and rolling stock.

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