It is frequently observed in the industry that some hang-over from previous amateur practice hinders professional clipping path jobs. It happens due to the past tendencies that a graphic designer cannot give up even when he/she works in a professional ground. That comes about for propensity rather than intricacy of Photoshop. If you have such problem, you can easily get rid of this by reverse practice with little care, watchfulness. Here I discuss some precautions and tips about hand drawn or manual clipping path with pen tool.

1# Duplicate the image or take it in a new layer before start your clipping job. It will preserve the main or source image intact for any mistake recovery in your clipping task. It will also help you with assistance or reference from the main source. Working on the source image is a very common mistake that graphics designer often does unmindfully. If once any unrecoverable mistake takes place, it will hardly ever let you a way out. Sometimes such little mistake also costs a lot from you.

2# Another problem from scatterbrain, is not to save the finished job properly or in a proper format. If you fail to save the image with selection, your total effort will end in vain. When you will open it again your path will not be shown. Or, if you want to save the image without any background, you must save it as a psd after clipping it. Or else you will lose your work.

3# As clipping path cuts an object from an image by its outline, you have to find out the edge sharply through which you will apply the pen tool. You can make the image sharper to make it more contrastive. It will help you with ease to follow a vivid outline. But be careful. It may distort the image. But for inconvenient or defective images designer has no way but doing this.

4# Ignorance of detail is a very common tendency of graphic designer in manual clipping path jobs. Particularly, when they have to deal with a lot of complicated images they want to overlook small details. Tiredness or idleness whatever the reason, such tendency will not help you in a professional pitch to earn better with a good reputation.

5# A very common problem of work procedure is to handle the anchor point properly. When your pen tool follows a curving line or a twist, you have to leave a number of anchor points in the path. You must neutralize previous curving by a single click right on the last anchor point before starting the next curve drawing. Unless you do this you may find some unnecessary curves disfiguring the path. Thoroughly observe every anchor-point to make a finest output.

6# Zoom-in the image to get a convenient look for drawing. Try to keep your path strictly sticking on to the object’s edge. Don’t go inside or outside of the edge and try to keep a smooth edge as-it-is in the real image. Be careful about the thorny and spiky edge. It will look odd in a bigger view.

For some high-end demonstration, I suggest everybody to view the archive of www.graphicsbangladesh.com. Watch good work, be good workman. For better learning, go for online article, website & discussion. Being with market-savvy professional and following their suggestion will help you to be a qualified designer.