Tools C and D are almost useless because you can easily access their features via keyboard commands while in the Pen tool A mode. The "Minus" Pen tool D is used to remove existing anchor points from a path or stroke. The "Plus" Pen tool C is used to add new anchor points to a path. I do not recommend using the Freeform tool due to the crude and imperfect paths it creates. The "Freeform" Pen tool B is used to draw paths freehand. The main Pen tool A is the tool that you will use most of the time. Photoshop's Pen tool has five attributes (A, B, C, D and E shown in Fig.
Note: The following hardware and software was used in this tutorial: Apple Mac Pro, a Wacom Intuos 6x8 drawing tablet and Adobe Photoshop CS3-CS5 with vector drawing capabilities. 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). The Pen tool can create straight lines by clicking point to point or by constraining its movement with the shift key.
Once you become comfortable with this powerful tool you will rarely use the Line tool. The Pen tool is one of the most useful tools in the Photoshop tool palette, but it can also be one of the most frustrating tools to master for the Photoshop newcomer. In Adobe Photoshop CS, drawing line-art can best be done via the Pen tool (P). Photoshop Paths | Airbrush/Brush Tool | Basic Painting | Layer Masks | Color ManagementĪll Tutorial Text & Images - Copyright © 2011 KHI, Inc. Members get instant access to all of SitePoint’s ebooks and interactive online courses, like Foundations of Photoshop.Ĭomments on this article are closed.Adobe Photoshop CS-CS5 Painting Tutorials If you enjoyed reading this post, you’ll love Learnable the place to learn fresh skills and techniques from the masters.
When you’re finished designing, simply choose View > Show > Grid or Ctrl+ (pc) or Cmd+ (Mac) to hide the grid and marvel at your lovely design.Īre you currently using grids for layout? Did you make your own, or did you download one from the web? If the snap becomes annoying, just switch it off by choosing View > Snap To > Grid again. Once this is selected you will find that objects will click or snap into place on your grid. You’ll see a tick mark beside this option when it is selected. Click OK, and that’s your grid in place.Įnabling Snapping helps you to align layers, text and basically any object you want. I leave the number of sub-divisions at 4. Still inside the Grid preferences, if you want to have a twelve column grids across a 960 pixel document, set the “Gridline every” option to be 80 pixels. If you find the Lines to be too overwhelming, using the Dots option is a good choice (see below). You can also choose the style, with a choice of Lines, Dashed Lines or Dots. (Note: I’m using CS3, earlier versions may look a little different but will have similar options for grids.)Ĭhoose the color you want for the grid lines.
This opens the Preference dialog box you can see below. To open up the grid preferences choose Edit > Preferences> Guides, Grids & Slices & Count. You could just leave your grid alone at this point, but by setting up some preferences you can take more control and set up how the lines in your grid will look, how far apart they are from each other and how many subdivisions appear between the main grid lines.
You’ll notice that there are several heavy lines, and in between them there are lighter dotted lines, known as sub-divisions. The grid that you can see is non-printing, it’s simply there for your benefit and reference. You will immediately see a grid overlaid on your new document. To add the grid, choose View > Show > Grid. If you’re designing for the 1024 x 768 pixel monitor resolution, then set up your new document as 960 pixels wide and 768 high.Ģ. And rather than make a new grid each time you’re designing, you can set up grid preference that can be reused.ġ. Adding a “Snap” lets you align objects very precisely along the lines of the grid. The Grid feature in Photoshop is a great tool to assist you with your layout designs, whether its design for the web or print.