Faking Hand-Drawn Illustrations

The inspiration for this effect came from a zoo t-shirt. You start with photos and convert them into
silhouettes, and the final effect looks as if you drew the figures in Adobe Illustrator.

Step 1
Open one of the photos you are going
to use for this effect. Use any selection
tool to put a selection around the
animal (elephant). The Magnetic lasso
tool can be used here but as usual it
wont do a perfect job all by itself, you
will have to add some areas to the
selection by holding down the Shift key
and using the Regular lasso tool.

Step 2
Once the image is selected, press CtrlJ to put it on its own separate layer
above the background layer.

Step 3
Slide the first photo over to one side of
your screen and open the second
photo (a giraffe). Put a selection
around the animal with the Magnetic
lasso tool and once again use the
Regular lasso tool to add any areas the
Magnetic lasso tool missed. When
your animal is selected, press Ctrl-J to
put it on its own layer.

Adapted from: ADOBE PHOTOSHOP CS DOWN AND DIRTY TRICKS c 2004.

J.Hoekstra 2011

Step 4
Slide the second photo over to one
side of your screen and open the third
photo (a rhino). Put a selection around
the animal with the Magnetic lasso tool
and once again use the Regular lasso
tool to add any areas the Magnetic
lasso tool missed. When your animal
is selected, press Ctrl-J to put it on its
own layer.

Step 5
Now open the photo that will be the
background (sunset) for the animals.

Step 6
Go to the Layers palette and click on
the New Layer icon to create a new
blank layer. Get the Rectangular
Marquee tool and draw a rectangular
selection across the bottom quarter of
the photo. Press d to set your
Foreground colour to black, then press
Alt-Backspace to fill this area with
black. Press Ctrl-D to deselect.

Step 7
Now switch back to one of the animal
photos. Press the letter v to get the
Move tool then drag the animal over to
your sunset background. Once it is in
your sunset document, you will need to
scale it down to size. Press Ctrl-T to
bring up Free Transform. Hold the
Shift key, grab a corner point and drag
inward to shrink the animal. Place the
animal on the edge of the black
rectangle. Now, repeat this process for
the other two animals.

Adapted from: ADOBE PHOTOSHOP CS DOWN AND DIRTY TRICKS c 2004.

J.Hoekstra 2011

Step 8
The animal will be on three separate
layers and you need all three on just
one layer, so in the Layers palette click
on the top animal layer, then press
Ctrl-E two times. This will merge the
animal layers down into one layer.

Step 9
Black should still be your Foreground
colour, so all you have to do is press
Shift-Alt-Backspace to fill the animals
with black, creating a hand-drawn
silhouette look.

Step 10
The final step is simply to add some
type to the black rectangle.

Adapted from: ADOBE PHOTOSHOP CS DOWN AND DIRTY TRICKS c 2004.

J.Hoekstra 2011

Adapted from: ADOBE PHOTOSHOP CS DOWN AND DIRTY TRICKS c 2004.

J.Hoekstra 2011