If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

I love getting questions via email! Bobby Hill a L.A. County Deputy Public Defender posed this question by email yesterday:

If I were in private practice, I certainly would seek to retain your services. As a public defender, I do not have funding for a presentation expert. (The exception would be a capital case. If I am assigned one, I would apply for the appointment at court expense of presentation expert such as you.)


So, I make my own presentations. I am moderately proficient in photoshop masking. I have a CS3 license. Still, I am having trouble understanding some of the composites in your examples, such in this screen capture:

It appears that the large vehicles are on a top layer, with landscapes which have been transformed (or warped) on the bottom. The windshields seem to have transparency, most evident in the upper left image.
You use a similar effect in other of your example presentations, a photo extending outside a frame. It is a compelling effect. Would you send a layered psd of this type of composite? I would be most grateful.

While this effect looks complicated, if you have basic Photoshop knowledge, it’s not that hard to create. Here’s a step by step guide to complete this effect. In this tutorial I’m going to be using a capture from a video deposition.



1. Open the image you will be “cutting out”. Make sure that your first layer is not set to “background” as you can’t erase it and be left with a transparent background.

2. Create a new layer (shift+apple+n). On this layer you’re going to create a white frame around the image. The easiest way I’ve found to do this use the paint bucket tool (G) and fill the entire layer with white. Change the layer’s opacity to 80%.

3. Use the rectangle tool (m) to create your frame. The trick here is to make the frame even on all sides, and not too thick or thin. Hit delete to clear the rectangle you selected. You’re now left with a white frame around your image.

4. Distort (apple+t, right click choose distort) the white frame to look like the image above. You have to get the feel of what you’re looking for here, every image will need the frame to be distorted and sized to get the desired effect.

5. Use the Polygonal Lasso Tool (L) to slowly and as accurately as possible select all areas of the frame, excluding the areas of the image that you want to “pop” out (in this example that would be the deponents head). Once completed use Select Inverse (apple+shift+i) to select the areas opposite of what you selected and you want to erase (the background).

6. Erase the frame using the erase tool (E), where it is interfering with your image. In this image that is the frame that is covering the witness’ face.

7. I also add a light drop shadow to give it some extra umph to stand out against the background in a slide.

I find this effect to be useful when you want to uniquely display an image and want your Jury/audience to focus more on a certain part of an image, rather than what’s going on in the background. I’ll be using this image in an opening statement this afternoon and within the next few days I will post the Keynote presentation to show what the finished project looks like you can view it here .

And remember, if you have a question or want to accomplish a certain look, send me an email and I’ll gladly help where I can!

Tags: closing, cut out, example, exhibit, opening, Photoshop, Tutorials