Photoshop Elements 8 for Windows: The Missing Manual

The Cookie Cutter Tool

At first glance, you may think the Cookie Cutter is a pretty silly tool. But actually, it's a really handy tool that you may use all the time once you understand it. The Cookie Cutter creates the same shapes as the Custom Shape tool, but you use it to crop a photo to the shape you chose. Want a heart-shaped portrait of your sweetie? The Cookie Cutter is your tool. If you're a scrapbooker, with a couple of clicks you can get results that would have taken ages and a bunch of special scissors to create with paper.

If you're not into that sort of thing, don't go away, because hidden in the shapes library are some of the most sophisticated, artistic crop shapes you can find. You can use them to get the kinds of effects that people pay commercial artists big bucks to create—like abstract crops that give a jagged or worn edge to your photo (great for contemporary effects).

You can also combine the result with a stroked edge, as explained in the box on The Cookie Cutter Tool, and maybe a Layer style (Adding Layer Styles). Even without any additional frills, your photo's shape will appear more interesting, as shown in Figure 12-28.

Figure 12-28. A quick drag with the Cookie Cutter is all it took to create the bottom graphic from the top photo. If you want to create custom album or scrapbook pages, you can rotate or skew your crops before you commit them. Transforming Images ...