Cutting things is a very common chore when crafting things in real life, just also a well-known performance in the digital earth. In terms of cutting and pasting files, that's a rather symbolic way of applying the concept, however when information technology comes to design, people oftentimes want to cutting images in a more literal or at least visual way.

The tools of epitome editing softwares are often based on real tools and features, only like the Pen or Brush Tool. However, when I wanted to cut a shape in Photoshop in one case, I unsuccessfully searched for a Pair of scissors or Knife Tool. Some people might think of the Slice Tool now, but that's merely helpful for subdividing the document. I recognized that in that location's no easy, directly way of cutting shapes, so I kept experimenting with this specific employ case.

For better agreement, I'll bear witness the goal and steps to get there in a simple example:

If you had to cut the rectangle above every bit a raster paradigm, this would be a pretty easy job: Just draw a choice, and hit Ctrl+X to cutting it. Since raster graphics are simply a grid of pixels, Photoshop only has to remove all pixels inside the selection. In contrast, vector graphics are based on mathematical expressions, or thinking more geometrically, they're fabricated up of 2D points connected past lines or curves.

Of class y'all could only rasterize the shape in Photoshop before splitting it up. That's a bad idea though, because you'd lose valuable benefits of using shapes, such every bit smaller file size or blur-costless upscaling.

At this bespeak it's worth mentioning, that Adobe Photoshop is mainly used for raster graphics and its counterpart Adobe Illustrator is generally a way meliorate choice for working with vector graphics. In Illustrator, there are more dedicated methods of cut shapes, however the additional cost might not be worth it for designers, who just have the photography subscription.

And then let's start cutting that rectangle in Photoshop. There are different approaches which I will explicate consecutively.

Manually Adjusting the Path Points

The kickoff intuition might exist to drag the ii points on the left to the position where you lot desire the cut to exist. A shape'south path can be edited after clicking it while holding the Ctrl key (Cmd on Mac). Keeping Ctrl pressed, you lot can then elevate a path point using your mouse. This tin get fiddly at times, then also holding the Shift key really helps by limiting the move to 45°-axes.

Washed! Well, at least for this specific use case and only one side of it. If at that place were more than points to the left, you would have to delete all of them. More critically, the method above doesn't work as perfectly for curved shapes.

Equally a side note, all shapes in Photoshop are based on so called Bezier Curves. This might be confusing at get-go as the example but consists of direct lines, and then hither's a quick caption: Bezier Curves are made upwards of command points, whereas the beginning and the concluding are the start and finish points and the other ones determine the curve menses. In Photoshop terminology, each path bespeak (also called anchor indicate) has two more command points for the left and right management. In case of the rectangle, Photoshop only displays the anchor bespeak considering the directional points are equal to it.

If we utilise the method above to a circle, its overall shape will get messed upwardly:

Equally you can see, we've only moved the anchor points, not the directional points. Adjusting these to fit the original curve catamenia on the right side of the cut line would be super slow and imprecise.

A slightly ameliorate approach is to add together new path points at the cutline, deleting unwanted points afterwards. Using the Pen Tool, clicking on a point volition remove it and clicking on a path section without a point volition add together one. You lot can and so run across that added points have two control points, even when on a direct line. (Photoshop calculates them to fit the current path menstruation)

Dragging the ones on the left side over to the anchor signal volition give you the cut shape. In case of the rectangle, you tin can also Alt+Click an anchor betoken to motion both directional points to its position. Unfortunately at that place's no shortcut for just resetting i of them, so for the circumvolve y'all'd still have to manually move them.

With a few steps, you can cut shapes along a simple line like that. In the next chapter I'll explain a more universal approach which also works with more circuitous cuts.

Combining Shapes Using Ready Operations

Photoshop offers 4 methods to combine multiple shapes. These are sometimes referred to under dissimilar terms, such equally ready, path, shape or boolean operations. Photoshop apace calculates the resulting path information which lets you create more complex shapes with a few clicks. With two shape layers selected, you tin access the operations via Layer -> Combine Shapes. Beneath is an overview of how each of them works.

Its worth pointing out that y'all can also have multiple sub paths on one shape layer. This comes in handy because you can change the blazon of operation for added paths in any path tool's settings at the top:

Setting it to Subtract Front Shape makes it possible to directly delete areas from a shape for example by cartoon a path with the pen tool.

To clean things upwardly, click the Merge Shape Components choice, which will leave y'all with but the new path resulting from the performance. That'south it - in one case you lot become a grasp of set up operations, cut shapes is a pretty easy task. I more thing to consider is that when yous combine divide shape layers, the new shape volition ever have the attributes (color, stroke, etc) of the topmost layer. If that'southward not what y'all want, plan ahead and copy the shape attributes before applying the performance and paste them afterwards.

Automating Repetitive Cut Steps

For people who need to cut many shapes, switching between set operations and drawing boxes can become repetitive and annoying steps that slow downwards the workflow. I've besides noticed, that sometimes yous don't desire to cut and delete a part, just simply split a shape into separate layers instead. Using the techniques explained before, you'd have to copy the shape layer, cut out one side and then repeat information technology the other manner round to get the inverted result.

Since I had recently started implementing Photoshop extensions, I thought that this would exist a corking utilise case for an improver. And then I've created Easy Cut, a small console which makes it easier to cut non only shapes, but whatever type of layer.

Like shooting fish in a barrel Cut lets yous cut layers either along a guideline, path or selection. Besides that, I've added an event organisation which checks for specific deportment like adding a new guide to trigger the cutting automatically. Yous can turn each of them on/off depending on personal preference. Check out this short demonstration video if you want to see the panel in action:

Wrapping upwardly

Before working with shapes in Photoshop, information technology's helpful to understand the fundamentals of how they actually piece of work. Each path point actually consists of a set up of three points - one ballast signal and 2 directional points. You tin drag these around belongings down Ctrl/Cmd to adjust the outline of a shape, yet this can become quite fiddly very quick.

To cut shapes, a much more efficient workflow is to utilize set operations which offer a way of combining multiple shapes. If you desire to speed up this specific task fifty-fifty more than, you can make use of external add-ons to do the repetitive steps for you.