Adobe Fireworks CS3: Trendy magazine cutout effect

Okay, so let's take a look at creating sort of a trendy cutout effect in Fireworks.

It's kind of a fun effect.

We showed a sample earlier today of a site that was kind of fun.

But really, a couple different ways we can approach this.

And Fireworks makes it really easy.

Same with a lot of programs.

Photoshop, you can do it.

But I've got my cutouts, right?

I've got my little building back here.

I've got the sand, and I've got my water.

And, of course, I could animate that like the sample video did.

Then I've got my two dudes.

You know, I've got a dude with the background, and then I've got one without one.

So we'll take a look at creating each of those right now.

All right, so let's turn off the two dudes.

And I'll turn on my starting image.

So this one has, like a lot of images, right, a solid background.

A couple ways we could do that.

We could use the pen tool to create a very elegant selection around the background.

But because this is sort of a rough paper cut magazine cutout effect,

we don't have to worry about a great selection.

So we could either use the lasso,

the polygons,

the polygon lasso tool, or even the pen tool.

But I'll use the polygon lasso tool just to create that really rough selection around him.

And that's what's kind of great about this is that you don't have to be really great with the tools.

So I'm just creating some lines around him.

And the great thing is, is that you don't really want it to be too accurate.

You know, it's like someone going through a magazine with a pair of scissors and, you know,

not very graceful with the scissors.

Maybe the scissors were old.

So I'm just going to keep going around and I'm just kind of concerned with the overall outline and keep going around with that over and we're almost done here.

Okay,

so now that we have our selection,

we just want to do an.

Inverse selection.

So we go to select select inverse and then hit delete.

So there's a guy.

All right.

Now that we have him,

we just need to make a selection path and I'm using fireworks CS three.

So I'm going to hold down my option key and click once on the thumbnail and you can see we have those,

those marching ants go up to select and do a create marquee to path.

Great feature.

So basically made a vector shape out of him.

If I turn that off,

you can see it.

And right now it looks like.

It just did a stroke.

I'm going to go ahead and fill that with white and I'm going to turn the stroke on as well.

So if I turn him on the man is right here and the path is covering,

I'm just going to drag the path below him.

Can't really see it,

but if I turn my path stroke up,

there's the effect,

right?

So I've got an edge.

Let me zoom in.

So there we go.

So we've got those jagged lines around him.

Select the path in the layers panel.

The more you know,

the bigger the stroke,

the more,

the effect,

right?

I don't know,

somewhere around maybe 20,

somewhere 15 again,

thin or thick,

you know,

depending on how you want to do it,

click both of them,

click control G and minimize that.

And now I've got my cutout effect.

So let's look at one more real quick.

So I have this other guy right here and he's on a white background or sometimes it could be a transparent image again,

because this is a really quick effect because this is supposed to meant to be kind of looking like you just did it in a

hurry.

We can use the magic wand tool and not worry about all the little artifacts that will be left over.

So I'm just going to select the wand tolerance of 20 anti alias and just go in there holding down the shift key when I click

inside of him right here just to get underneath the arms and it looks like my selection looks good.

Just hit delete and there we go a little bit down there.

So I'll just come in a little bit and use the eraser tool again.

The benefit of this is that.

I don't have to have a really great selection in order to make this effect work.

Okay,

really quick and we'll do the same thing at this point,

right?

I'm going to hold down my option key,

click him,

select convert marquee to path.

Looks like it retained the stroke that I set the last time.

So I'm just going to drag that beneath the guy

right there.

And

there's our effect once again.

So it's kind of a fun fact to kind of see that a lot right now.

You start putting some drop shadows and you create that layered effect on it.

And again,

I just did it for the buildings in the ocean here.

So just one way to do it using fireworks.