I am going to show everyone, how the Pen Tool is used. Since its the most overlooked tool in the photoshop pallette. Please, make sure to read everything, to understand the basic concepts of the Pen Tool. You can basically create anything you want using it, from shapes, to letters, lines, etc.
**Note: Please bare with me, it took me a while to write this bad boy.**
First, lets start off with the looking at the Pen Tool options, and learn what each pen option tool does, and how it can help us.
If you can look on the top left screen, you will see
. The first option is to make colored shapes, you can point, click, and test it if you want to make shapes, pretty simple (also used to making vectors with images and shapes).The second option, is to make shapes, with no color, simple (also used for cutting images).
**Note: You must make sure that if you are done with a shape, or cutting an image, you must make sure to end at the begining, to close out your selected part**
example:
|| Curves ||
In this example, Im going to show you how to manage a curve. The pen tool is the best way to cut an image, especially for those hard to get areas that the "eraser" cant get too, since I know alot of us started with the eraser, well, once you learn this, say good bye to the eraser, because once you learn the art of cutting, you wont need it, but only for small touch ups.
open up a new file, doesnt matter what size, and select your pen tool, and make sure to have it selected on "Shape Layers (explained above).
Click on one section, and click on another, and hold the mouse down, while dragging either up or down, and you will that the straight line that you had, has become a curved line.
Now, once you have that, you will click somewhere else on the canvas, and you will see it creates another curved line, once you drag it to where you want it.
Now, if you want to change a point on your shape, you will need to use the "Point Convert Tool"
, which if you click on any point you created, you can manipulate it to reshape it again.and on your screen, you should see the
, on your screen, and just click on a point, and drag it any way you want.If you want to add points to a path, you can choose the normal pen tool, and add a point to your existing shape and manipulate it anyway you want. Now, if you click on any point on your shape with the pen tool, you can also delete that path. It is very easy to modify your shape.
|| Free Form Pen Tool ||
The free form pen tool
, is another way to make custom shapes. On your canvas, just click anywhere, and hold it, and drag it anywhere on the canvas. And when you let go, photoshop easily figures out where the points are on the canvas on the shape you created. I made this good off "S" shape. Came out pretty dope.
Now, if you want, you can also click on the Path Selection Tool (Ctrl+A), and it will show you where the points are, and you can manipulate it anyway you want with the regular pen tool.
Just a quick way to create any organic shape you want, with the free form pen tool
Next tutorial, will be on how to cut images.
