: How to create a transparent stroke or outline around a vector shape? I'm attempting to create a transparent stroke around the inner heart shape, which knocks out the "lungs" layer below to reveal

@Mendez620

I've always just copied the layer I want to have a stroke around (Ctrl-j), add a stroke of the ideal width to this new layer, rasterized layer style, then went into blending options, turned fill opacity to 0 and set the knockout to deep, then hit Ok and merged it into the layer the lungs would be on.

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@Dunderdale640

The best method I found to do this is as follows:


Create a stroke (any colour) of the appropriate size for the shape for which you wish to make the stroke transparent (although it will look like this, this will not be exactly what you are doing to achieve it.)
Separate this stroke on to its own layer by right-clicking the shape's layer styles and selecting "Create Layers." Ignore the others for now.
Now it's on its own layer, Cmd-click the stroke's shape in the layers panel, which will select the shape.
Invert your selection, by holding Shift + Cmd + I, or Select > Inverse at the top.
Select the layer below, which you will be masking with the separated stroke layer effect.
Select "Add layer mask" from the bottom of the layers panel.
Erase the stroke effect layer.
To clean things up, if desired, merge this bottom layer with the top layer and all of the separated layer effects to create one layer.

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@Pierce403

A transparent stroke is probably not the best way to look at it. You'll need to use masks (in this case vector masks) to accomplish this.

General workflow is to Fill a layer with a color, create a path and go layer>vector mask. This will now control what of that layer is visible. With the mask selected, you'll notice a bunch of options in a dropdown at the top to combine/subtract/intersect/exclude. If you play around with these features, including combining multiple paths in the mask, you'll soon get what you are after.

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@Murray976

I'm not sure of what you are trying to do.

For an even outline you probably want Object > Path > Offset Path instead of just duplicating and scaling the heart shape.

Edit: I just realised you have used Photoshop as a tag and my previous advice is for Illustrator.

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