Adobe Photoshop Paths Tutorial
Basic Drawing with Photoshop's Paths, Bézier Curves
Photoshop's Paths & Pen Tool Attributes
In Adobe Photoshop CS, drawing line-art can best be done via the Pen tool (P). The Pen tool is one of the most useful tools in the Photoshop tool pallet, but it can also be one of the most frustrating tools to master for the Photoshop newcomer. Once you become comfortable with this powerful tool you will rarely use the Line tool.
The Pen tool can create straight lines by clicking point to point or by constraining its movement with the shift key. It can also create graceful bends, curves, and other PostScript shapes that are referred to as Bézier Curves (named after French mathematician and engineer Pierre Bézier).
Photoshop's Pen tool has five attributes (A, B, C, D and E shown in Fig. 1). The main Pen tool A is the tool that you will use most of the time. The "Freeform" Pen tool B is used to draw paths freehand. I do not recommend using the Freeform tool due to the crude and imperfect paths it creates. The "Plus" Pen tool C is used to add new anchor points to a path. The "Minus" Pen tool D is used to remove existing anchor points from a path or stroke. Tools C and D are almost useless because you can easily access their features via keyboard commands while in the Pen tool A mode. Pen tool E can change a hard corner anchor point into a Bézier curve anchor point as well as change a Bézier curve anchor point back to a hard corner point.
To create a rasterized line with the pen tool you will use the "Stroke" command accessed from the Menu Bar (Fig. 2 Edit>Stroke). The term "Stroke" refers to the actual line that is created when you "Stroke" the path's selection. You should always "select" the path in order to stroke it (see next section). Stroking the path directly produces a flawed line. You can also "Fill" the selected area. The term "Fill" denotes the foreground or background color that will fill in the area within any shape that you create.
When creating line-art for technical illustration you would generally "stroke" the selection in a 100% solid solid black. The line thickness (or stroke weight) is controlled by the "Stroke" pallet shown in Fig. 3. To stroke the line directly under the path you would use the "Center" setting under "Location".
Photoshop Paths & Actions Pallets
To Select the Path to be stroked, "Command>Click on the Path in the "Paths" pallet shown in Fig. 4. The active path will be visible on the artboard and highlighted in the "Paths" pallet. To save a path, double click it (it will be called "Work Path") and rename it in the "Save Path" dialogue box.
You can use the "Actions" pallet window (Fig. 5) to create several commonly used "Stroke" commands. This will make stroking a Path a "one click" operation when the actions are set to the "Button Mode" shown in Fig. 5. Use the actions pallet's "Record" mode to set all of the pre-defined parameters for the stroke effect.
Continue to: Drawing with Photoshop Pen Tool
Back to: Illustration Tutorials
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