The Pink Shoes Project

  1. Open Pink Shoes and Blue Silk.
  2. Drag the shoes onto the blue silk, press Q to enter the QuickMask mode.
  3. Select a brush that is big enough. You may need a soft edged brush for this project.
  4. Using Black, just paint the shoes. They will be masked in a rubylith (red) color.
  5. Use the X key to switch from black to white. Paint out any rubylith that is not precisely on the shoes. You can continue to switch colors, to paint the rubylith in and out again.
  6. When you have painted the shoes to your satisfaction, press Q again. The rubylith will disappear and the selection marquee will appear around the shoes.
  7. You masked the shoes and selected the background. Press Delete, and the background will disappear from around the shoes. You can now create the drop shadow, as you did above. (Make a sandwich of background, shadow and object; fill shadow layer with dark color; blur and position.)
  8. A shadow may be more convincing if you put the layer in Multiply mode and adjust the transparency.
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