Updated Mar 04,2025

How to Outline a Shape in Photoshop: A Complete Guide for Beginners and Pros

outline a shape in photoshop

Outlining a shape in Photoshop is a fundamental skill that can enhance your designs, making element paths with bold edges or subtle strokes. Whether you're a beginner looking to add simple borders to shapes or a professional looking for more intricate effects, mastering this technique opens up endless creative possibilities.

Photoshop is the software that simplifies the daily lives of digital artists, graphic designers, and editing experts. They need it to solve their problems, and it is one thing they try to master. Photoshop offers a huge possibility that relates to digital art and graphical content. We are living in a world full of graphical content. From mobile screens to offline banners and posters, graphical content is a one-stop solution to reveal our thoughts, emotions, and goals.

In this guide, we'll walk you through various methods to outline a shape in Photoshop, ensuring you can achieve the perfect look for any outline project.

What is Object Outlining in Photoshop?

Photoshop comes with many opportunities that help us to edit images precisely. And there is indeed nothing you can’t do to your image with Photoshop. From simply removing any aspects to high-end photo retouching, Photoshop allows all the possibilities with its tools and functions. Object outlining is one of the essential activities in Photoshop that requires all the editing terms you would do in Photoshop. 

Before going too deep into the discussion, let’s get a quick introduction to this Photoshop term called object outlining. Simply put, object outlining is the task of outlining the image object. When image editing or retouching, editors need to perform specific modifications. 

Like object removal, they need to select the object at first to remove that out. By outlining the object, they simply separate the object from the rest part of the image. Then the object can easily be eliminated from the image.

How to Outline a Shape in Photoshop?

We come to the procedure part of creating an outline in an object. How can you get it on your own? Fortunately, outlining an image object is not such a complex issue. You can learn the technique by practicing it a little bit hard. There are plenty of tools in Photoshop that will help you in this regard. They are:

  1. Lasso tool
  2. Polygonal lasso tool
  3. Magnetic lasso tool
  4. Quick selection tool
  5. Pen tool
  6. Magic wand tool

If you have Photoshop installed on the device, then you can easily check all these methods on your own. They all are different types of Photoshop tools but work similarly. You can get a lot of helpful tutorials on YouTube discussing how to use those tools, which are almost free.

When Do You Need Image Outlining?

So, we know object outlining is an important Photoshop task. It is required in every photo editing operation to make things smooth and appealing for us. You can say object outlining is an initial task to whatever you do with images. Well, you may have an interest in editing images on your own with photo editing software.

In the beginning, you have to learn a lot of Photoshop basics to make the journey easier for you. In this article, we are talking about object outlining, which is an important Photoshop basic.

As previously said, object outlining can be required in most of the Photoshop editing process. Here, it is described specifically when it is mandatory to draw a vector outline on an image object.

1. Change the Color of A Certain Object

outline a shape in photoshop

Changing the color of the image object is an important editing factor. We need to make an image visually appealing with the color that it deserves. 

Sometimes images that we captured don’t come with the right color feelings. It happens because of the lighting issue. Lighting is not just determining the brightness and darkness of an image but it also responds to the tone, mood, and atmosphere of the image. 

Whenever we have to change the color of any particular portion of an image, we need to evaluate that portion first. If we don’t do that, altering may cause an effect on other parts of the image. So, we need to outline the object to specify that we have to apply the effect only to those portions.

2. Removing Objects

outline a shape in photoshop

Removing any object from images also requires outlining the object. Removing an object from images is commonly known as the clipping path which is also a process of making a vector path around the object that we need to remove. Removing unwanted objects from images is a popular image editing activity. 

In this activity, the clipping path technique is highly recommended as it is a non-destructive removing technique that can easily handle this no matter how complex the object is. 

In a clipping path, an expert has to draw a vector outline with a Photoshop pen tool. The pen tool works like a pen outlining an image.

3. Highlighting Specific Object

how to outline a shape in photoshop

Sometimes we have to highlight a specific object to clarify the main theme of that. highlighting is necessary for such operations when the image includes a lot of similar objects, but we need to specify one of them. 

Although, object highlighting also helps to increase the elegance of an image object. With high editing support, you can highlight human bodies and objects with glowing and colorful lines.

4. Removing the Whole Background

how to outline a shape in photoshop

Again, here is a clipping path. The background is an important aspect of images that must be made with high visuality. Background can increase the beauty of the whole image, but we have to keep it relevant to the image object. 

For instance, e-commerce retailers need a white background in their product images. It is necessary to make product images lucrative and look more real. This is why e-commerce retailers tend to find clipping path services. A clipping path is the safest way to draw an outline around the object and separate that from the image background.

5. Making An Outline in the Text

how to outline a shape in photoshop

Here is one last example of outlining objects in Photoshop. You can outline texts to show them creatively and stylishly. The stylish font always looks beautiful and catchy. But with Photoshop, you can add some graphics on texts and also use that in any other attachments further.

Endnote

However, this article aims to help you understand the concept of object outlining in Photoshop, a term that may be unfamiliar to some. We explore how to outline a shape in Photoshop, an important skill for creating professional outlines. If you're learning Photoshop to pursue a career, mastering object outlining is essential.

Additionally, do you have any images you’d like transformed into black-and-white or colorful outlines? You’re in the right place! Graphic Design Eye offers line art, vector line art, line drawings, coloring book pages, illustrations, and more. Contact us now!

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