Oreilly Photoshop CS5 The Missing Manual_6

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Nội dung Text: Oreilly Photoshop CS5 The Missing Manual_6

Customizing Brushes • Spacing controls the distance between the each tip’s brush marks in a stroke. • Scatter lets you control how the brush marks are distributed throughout the stroke. • Count lets you specify the number of brush marks at each spacing interval. Color Dynamics These settings let you control how the paint color varies throughout a brushstroke— another way to introduce a bit of variety into your strokes so they don’t look uniform (see Figure 12-29). Figure 12-29: The Color Dynamics settings let you make a single brushstroke look like it’s made from more than one color. If you don’t have Color Dynamics turned on and your foreground color chip set to green, your brushstroke will look like the one on the left. But if you turn on Color Dynamics and set your background color chip to yellow, you can use the Foreground/Background Jitter slider to create a brushstroke that randomly combines those two colors (middle). And if you turn on the Hue Jitter setting, you can introduce all kinds of funky colors to your brushstroke (right). • Foreground/Background Jitter and Control. These settings let you con- trol how the paint alternates between the foreground and background colors throughout a stroke. In the Control pop-up menu, you can choose from Off, Fade, Pen Pressure, Pen Tilt, Stylus Wheel, and Rotation (described on page 522). • Hue Jitter. Lets you control color variation in your brushstroke; a higher setting introduces all kinds of funky color flecks. Figure 12-29, right, shows this setting in action. Drag the slider to the right to introduce more color flecks and drag it left to introduce fewer. • Saturation Jitter. Increasing this setting makes Photoshop vary the saturation of the color throughout the stroke. • Brightness Jitter. Use this setting to vary the brightness of the color throughout the stroke. chapter 12: painting in photoshop 527
Customizing Brushes • Purity. This setting increases (if you set it to a positive percentage) or decreases (if you set it to a negative percentage) the color’s saturation. Transfer This category, which used to be called Other Dynamics, lets you adjust how much paint Photoshop lays down with each brushstroke (see Figure 12-30). The Opacity and Flow settings here override the ones in the Options bar, so if you tweak them, you may find that the Options bar’s settings don’t seem to work. For example, if you set your Opacity Jitter to 60 percent, that’s the most opaque your brush can be, even if you set it to 100 percent Opacity in the Options bar. You’ve been warned! Here are your options: • Opacity Jitter and Control. These settings control how transparent the paint is throughout the brushstroke. Setting the Opacity Jitter slider to a higher per- centage makes the stroke more see-through (see Figure 12-30, bottom). In the Control pop-up menu, your choices are Off, Fade, Pen Pressure, Pen Tilt, and Stylus Wheel (page 522). • Flow Jitter and Control. This lets you specify how much paint the brush lays down throughout the brushstroke. A higher percentage means the flow varies more and a lower percentage means the flow varies less. The Control menu gives you the same options as Opacity Jitter Control menu. • Wetness Jitter and Control. You can use this setting to make Photoshop vary how wet (liquidy) your brush strokes are. • Mix Jitter and Control. Tweak these settings to vary how much paint you’re mixing from your canvas onto your brush. Figure 12-30: If you want your brushstroke’s opacity to vary randomly, increase the opacity jitter. Here you see the difference between a brushstroke with no opacity jitter (top) and one with the opacity jitter set to 100 percent (bottom). Photoshop CS5: The Missing Manual 528
Customizing Brushes Noise Turn on this checkbox to make Photoshop apply a dose of random, grainy texture to your brush tip (if you’re using a dual brush tip, the program applies it to both tips). You can use it to introduce more texture and randomness to your brushstrokes. For some reason, the noise isn’t as noticeable with hard-edge brushes as it is with soft- edge brushes (maybe because the noise is just more visible in the gray edge pixels you get with soft-edged brushes). Wet Edges Turning on this checkbox makes the center of your brushstrokes transparent, so the paint looks like it’s building up along the edges of the stroke (similar to painting with watercolors). Airbrush Turn on this checkbox to make your brush behave like a can of spray paint. It has the same effect as clicking the Airbrush button in the Options bar (page 500). Smoothing If you want your brushstrokes to look smoother than they were when you painted them, turn this checkbox on. It’s especially helpful if you don’t have a very steady hand, which can make your brushstrokes look jagged. Protect Texture This checkbox lets you apply the same texture, pattern, and size to all your brush presets (the built-ins) that have a texture. So, for example, you could use this option to make it look like you’re painting on the same surface with a variety of brushes without actually having to turn on the Texture category for each brush. You can think of it as a global texture option. Suggested Brush Customizations With so many settings, it can be confusing to figure out which brushes really need changing. You’ll find that the presets are really handy, and with just a few tweaks here and there, they can become indispensable. Figure 12-31 shows a sample of some extremely useful yet simple customizations. If you like what you see, check out Table 12-1 to learn about specific settings. chapter 12: painting in photoshop 529
Customizing Brushes Table 12-1. Suggested brush customization Brush number in Figure Shape Other Opacity1 Spacing2 12-26 Description Dynamics Dynamics Uses 1 Round, hard- 25% 0% Size Jitter = None Shading, edged brush Pen blocking Pressure in color, sketching 2, 3 Rough-edged 25% 0% None With (2) Shading, brush or without adding (3) Flow texture, Jitter = Pen making hair Pressure 4 Rough brush 30% 0% Angle Jitter None Adding (custom)3 = 20%; texture, Control = shading Off 5 Small dot 30% 0% Size Jitter = Opacity Making brush Pen Jitter = Pen hair, shad- (custom)3 Pressure Pressure ing 6 Round, 100% 20-25% Size Jitter = Opacity Shading, rough-edged Pen Jitter and blocking in brush Pressure Flow Jitter color = Pen Pressure 7 Textured 30% 0% None Flow Jitter Adding round brush = Pen texture, Pressure shading 8 Textured 100% 0% Size Jitter = Flow Jitter Sketching, round brush Pen = Pen creating Pressure Pressure line art, adding fine details in small areas 9 Scattered 70% 25% Scatter = Opacity Adding spot brush 20%; Size Jitter and texture (custom ) 3 Jitter = Pen Flow Jitter Pressure = Pen Pressure 1 Adjust this setting in the Options bar. 2 Set this in the Brush Tip Shape category—see page 521. 3 Meaning a custom made brush you make from scratch as described in the next section. Photoshop CS5: The Missing Manual 530
Defining a New Brush Figure 12-31: There’s no limit to the number of 1. brushes you can customize or create, so feel free to go hog wild. Here’s a sample of a few brushes digital artists can’t live without. 2. The first column shows what a single dab of paint looks like using each brush so you can get an idea of the 3. brush’s shape. The second column shows a single brushstroke, and the third column shows multiple brush- strokes using three different colors of 4. paint (green, yellow, and blue). If any of these brushes strike your fancy, see Table 12-1 to learn the spe- 5. cific settings used to create each one. 6. 7. 8. 9. Defining a New Brush For some seriously creative fun, try making your own brushes. You can make them out of anything—a stroke that you’ve drawn with another brush, your logo, even an image that you’ve scanned into your computer to use as texture (like a leaf). Some folks call brushes that you create yourself sampled brushes because you sample part of a pattern, object, or image to create them; in other words, you have to select the pattern, object, or image you want to base the brush on. The first step is to create the paint dab—a dab of paint in the shape of the brush tip—you want to turn into a custom brush (see Figure 12-32, left). You can create a paint dab in a variety of ways, from the quick to the super involved. The basic prem- ise is to create a new 300×300–pixel document and then use a variety of brushes at chapter 12: painting in photoshop 531
Defining a New Brush various opacity settings to create your dab. You can even add texture to it—the more irregular and messy the dab, the more interesting your brush will be. To turn the dab into a brush that you can use to apply color, you have to create it using black and gray paint at 100 percent opacity (that’s the Options bar’s opacity setting). When you paint with the brush later, the 100-percent black areas will create opaque color and the gray areas will be semitransparent. Note: If you want to practice making a custom brush using the paint dab shown in Figure 12-32, down- load the file DotsBrush.psd from the Missing CD page at www.missingmanuals.com/cds. Figure 12-32: Left: You can create this paint dab by starting with one of the small, soft-edged brush presets. Set your foreground color chip to black, paint a few dots, and then switch to some percentage of gray and paint a few more. Just make sure that the Options bar’s Opacity field is set to 100 percent. Right: If you make a few changes in the Brush panels, you can create an extremely useful texture and shading brush. Once you’ve created your paint dab, follow these steps to turn it into a brush: 1. Use the Rectangular Marquee tool to select the dab. To define a brush, you have to select the object first. Press M (or Shift-M) to grab the Rectangular Marquee and draw a selection around the dab (Figure 12-32, left). 2. Choose Edit➝Define Brush Preset. In the resulting dialog box (Figure 12-32, left), give your brush a name and then click OK. Photoshop CS5: The Missing Manual 532
Defining a New Brush 3. Create a new document (it can be any size) and press B to grab the Brush tool. Press �-N (Ctrl+N on a PC) to open a new document so you can test drive your new brush. 4. In the Options bar, select your new brush from the Brush menu and then open the Brush panel. Once you’ve selected your new brush, click the button at the far right of the Op- tions bar to open the Brush panel (or click its panel dock icon on the right side of your screen or choose Window➝Brush). Tip: Alternatively, you can open the Brush panel first, click Brush Presets, and then select your new brush from there. 5. In the Brush panel, click the Brush Tip Shape category. To create a brush similar to number 4 in Figure 12-31, change the diameter to 100 pixels, the angle to 70 degrees, and the spacing to 1 percent. If you have a graphics tablet, click the Other Dynamics category and set Opacity Jitter and Flow Jitter to Pen Pressure. 6. Click the Shape Dynamics category. If you have a graphics tablet, set Size Jitter to Pen Pressure and Minimum Diam- eter to 30 percent (Figure 12-32, right). If you don’t have a graphics tablet, try entering a Size Jitter of 25 percent instead (you just won’t be able to change it by applying more or less pressure with your pen). 7. Turn on the Smoothing checkbox. As explained on page 529, this setting makes your brushstrokes smoother, so they look less jagged. 8. Save your brush again. Click the “Create new brush” button at the bottom right of the Brush panel (it looks like a piece of paper with a folded corner). If you don’t save the brush again, you lose the settings you just changed. In the resulting dialog box, give it the same name that you did in step 2. Not only have you created a brush that’s great for textures in digital paintings, but you can also use it to make some interesting grunge effects when you’re editing photos. The ability to make your own brushes gives you a ton of control when you’re apply- ing textures. Who knew? chapter 12: painting in photoshop 533
Installing New Brushes Tip: If you want to share your new brush with the masses, choose Save Brushes from either the Brush menu’s fly-out menu (Figure 12-21) or the Brush panel’s menu. Give it a name and then hop on over to the Adobe Studio Exchange site (www.adobe.com/cfusion/exchange) and upload your file to achieve Photoshop fame. Installing New Brushes You’re not alone when it comes to creating new brushes. Folks love sharing their creations, and once they’ve made a really cool brush, they’re usually happy to share it with the masses. That’s why all manner of free brushes are available on the Web. One of the best resources you’ll ever find is the Adobe Studio Exchange site (www. adobe.com/cfusion/exchange). Click the site’s Photoshop link and then choose Brushes from the category list on the right side of the page (you can find all manner of actions, custom shapes, gradients, and so on here, too). You can even download a brush set that’ll make your image look like it was printed on torn paper as shown in Figure 12-33. Once you’ve downloaded the brush set to your hard drive, choose Load Brushes from the Brush Preset picker’s fly-out menu (or from the Brush panel’s menu) and navigate to where the brush set lives (look for a file whose name ends in “.abr”, such as Paper_Damage.abr) and then click Load (you can also double-click the .abr file and Photoshop will put it in the right spot). Your new brushes appear in the Brush menu, ready for you to use. The streaks in Figure 12-33 were made by setting the foreground and background chips to white and brown (respectively) and then choosing Filter➝Render➝Cloud followed by Filter➝Blur➝Motion Blur. Next, the streak layer’s blend mode was changed to Hard Light. With a few clicks of the funky Paper Damage brushes, the photo looks ancient! Photoshop CS5: The Missing Manual 534
Installing New Brushes Figure 12-33: At the Adobe Studio Exchange site, you can download some amazing brushes and share your own creations (top left). After you download and install the Paper Damage brush set (top right), for example, you can use its brushes to age a photo (bottom). In this image, each damaging brush- stroke was painted in white on its own layer to control the layer’s opacity and protect the original image. chapter 12: painting in photoshop 535
Installing New Brushes GeM IN tHe RoUGH The Art History Brush Adobe would have you believe that you can use the Art 5. Change the Options bar’s Area field to 50 pix- History Brush to turn a photo into a painting, but the darn els. This setting controls the area covered by the artsy thing doesn’t work very well (as is painfully clear in the (and totally destructive) brushstrokes you create as figure below). It’s similar to the more useful History Brush you brush across your image. Enter a large num- (page 29) in that you can select a snapshot of your im- ber for more strokes or a smaller number for fewer age (a previous version saved at a particular time) to work strokes. If you have any hope of recognizing the ob- from, which is why it’s in the same toolset. That said, take ject you’re painting, keep this number relatively low this tool for a spin and decide for yourself whether it de- (less than 40 percent). serves a spot in your regular tool rotation. Here’s how: 6. Make sure the Tolerance field is set to 0 percent. A low tolerance lets you paint strokes anywhere you 1. Grab the Art History Brush by pressing Y. Adding want. A high tolerance limits them to areas that differ the Shift key lets you cycle through all the tools in a from the color in the snapshot or history state you toolset. So, if pressing Y selected the History Brush, picked in step 2. simply press Shift-Y to select the Art History Brush instead. 7. Mouse over to your image and paint it. As you brush over your image, your clear, recognizable 2. In the History panel, pick a snapshot or history photo will be replaced with random, supposedly state (page 27). Open the History panel by choosing artistic swaths of paint, transforming it into madness Window➝History and then choose a state by clicking and mayhem. Undo command, anyone? the left column beside the state or snapshot you want to work with. 3. Pick a small, soft-edged brush from the Options bar’s Brush menu. You can set the tool’s blend mode and opacity in the Options bar just like you can with the Brush tool, and use the Ctrl-Option-drag (Alt+right-click+drag on a PC) keyboard shortcut to resize your brush on the fly—drag left to make your brush smaller and right to make it bigger. 4. In the Options bar, choose Tight Short from the Style menu. You’ll find 10 different painting styles in this pop-up menu, including Tight Short, Loose Me- dium, Loose Long, and so on. Anything with the word “tight” in the name works a little better than the oth- ers because it keeps the brushstrokes close together. Photoshop CS5: The Missing Manual 536
chapter 13 Drawing with the Vector Tools I f your first thought when someone mentions drawing is, “But I can’t even draw a straight line!”, don’t worry: You can draw in Photoshop. To draw a straight line, just grab the Line tool (it’s one of the shape tools—see page 554) and drag from one spot to another. Or, as you learned in the previous chapter, grab the Brush tool, click in one spot, and then Shift-click another spot; it’s that simple. The program also includes all kinds of built-in shapes like circles, rectangles, and rounded rectangles that are incredibly easy to use. But what about creating more sophisticated drawings and illustrations? The good news is you don’t have to worry about drawing anything freehand, whether it’s a line or a curvy shape. Instead, the vector drawing tools you’ll learn about in this chapter let you set down a series of points; Photoshop then creates paths in between those points to form the outline of your shape. Unlike the things you draw by hand with the Brush tool or a real-world pencil, these vector objects are infinitely tweakable: You can move points and adjust the paths to create any shape you want, letting you create complex yet flexible works of art from scratch, as Figure 13-1 shows. 537
Figure 13-1: Top: Here you can see the paths that make up the basic shapes of this digital painting by Bert Monroy called “Red Truck.” You read that correctly: it’s not a photograph—Bert drew every detail by hand. He created the basic shapes using the Pen tool, and then filled in the details with the Brush tool. Instead of a mouse, he used a Wacom in- teractive pen display (a monitor you can draw directly on; see www.wacom.com/ cintiq). Bottom: This wire- frame drawing (called “Oakland” and also by Bert) is even more complex. If you look closely, you can make out the shapes he created with the Pen tool to make the neon tubes and the sockets that the tubes go into. Now that’s something to aspire to! You can see more of Bert’s amazing work at www.bertmonroy. com. Now, if you’re tempted to bail from this chapter because you’re not an artist, hold your horses—you can use the vector drawing tools in a variety of other ways. For example: • Once you get the hang of these tools, you can use them to add elements to your images that don’t exist and can’t be photographed, like the ornamental shapes and embellishments shown on page 316. Photoshop CS5: The Missing Manual 538
Photoshop’s Drawing Modes • You can use the drawing tools to create precise selections that you can’t make any other way. In fact, the Pen tool is a favorite of seasoned Photoshop jockeys because of its selection prowess (see page 566). • You can use the shape tools to mask (hide) parts of your image (see page 572). Because they’re vector based, they’re a lot more flexible than the regular ol’ layer masks you learned about back on page 113. Learning to draw with Photoshop’s vector tools takes time and patience because they work very differently than any other tool you’ve used so far. But taking the time to master them sets you on the path (pun intended) to becoming a true Photoshop guru. Before you dive into using the tools themselves, though, you need a quick tour of the different drawing modes you can use. Take a deep breath and read on! Photoshop’s Drawing Modes In the real world, the word drawing implies that you’re sketching lines and shapes by hand. But in Photoshop and in this book, drawing refers to creating objects using Photoshop’s vector tools: the Pen tool and the various Shape tools. Drawing with these tools is more like drafting (think technical illustrations such as blueprints) because you’re creating precise outlines of shapes instead of the varying lines of a sketch or painting. Note: Here’s a way to make sense of the difference between Photoshop’s painting tools and its vector drawing tools: If Van Gogh or Michelangelo had used Photoshop, they would have liked the Brush tool because of its similarity to real-world paintbrushes. However, artists like Matisse, Mondrian, and Picasso would have favored the vector drawing tools because their painting styles are more precise and angular and depend on creating smooth, clean geometric shapes and lines. Photoshop has three different drawing tool modes (see Figure 13-2), which deter- mine exactly what happens when you use the tools. Here’s what each mode does: Figure 13-2: Subtract from Fill pixels path area When you press P to grab Paths Pen tool the Pen tool, you see three Custom Add to Shape layers Freeform Pen tool shapes path area buttons for different drawing modes near the left end of the Options bar. The third option (Fill Pixels) is grayed out here because you can only use it Built-in shapes Intersect path areas with shape tools (page 551). Exclude overlapping path areas chapter 13: drawing with the vector tools 539
Photoshop’s Drawing Modes • Shape Layers. When you’re in this mode and you make your first click with any vector drawing tool, Photoshop creates a new Shape layer (page 77) for you to work on. When you finish drawing the shape, Photoshop automatically fills it with your foreground color (page 24). Drawing in this mode is like using a pair of scissors to cut shapes out of a piece of construction paper—these shapes can hide content on any layers below them, where the layers overlap. Shape Layers mode works with the Pen tool and the shape tools. It’s great for creating geometric shapes filled with color that you can use in your design or overlay onto your image (like the embellishments shown on page 316). You can also use this mode to add a symbol or logo to a product in your image (see page 553). Photoshop comes with a slew of built-in shapes to choose from, but you can also create your own (page 557) and download shapes from the Internet. As you learned back in Chapter 4, you can also use the shape tools to create selec- tions. (See page 147, for example, to learn how to round the edges of your photo using the Rounded Rectangle tool.) • Paths, as you learned earlier, are lines and curves between points, which you’ll find out more about in the next section. Paths mode doesn’t create a new Shape layer or fill the path with color; instead, when you’re in this mode, Photoshop turns whatever you draw into an empty outline. Use this mode when you want to use the Pen tool to make selections (page 566) or create a clipping path (page 568), or want to create a vector mask that you may need to resize (see page 572). You can also fill paths with color (page 564) and give them a stroke (page 563), but Photoshop doesn’t automatically create a new layer when you use the Pen tool or a Shape tool in Paths mode; you have to create a new layer first and then add the fill or stroke. The paths you create in this mode live in the Paths panel, which you’ll learn about on page 550. • Fill Pixels. This mode works only with the shape tools (page 551). Normally when you use one of these tools, Photoshop plops you into Shape Layers draw- ing mode and fills the vector shape with your foreground color. But in Fill Pixels mode, Photoshop creates a pixel-based layer instead (it still fills the shape with your foreground color). This is handy if you need to edit the shape using tools that don’t work with vectors, like filters, painting tools, and so on. That said, you could just as easily rasterize a Shape layer (see page 110) and then use those tools. So unless you know for sure that you’ll never need to change the shape of the object you’re drawing, you won’t use this mode very often. The basic drawing process is the same no matter which mode you choose: You pick the Pen tool or one of the shape tools, choose a drawing mode, draw the shape, edit the shape, and then save it for future use. In the following sections you’ll learn how to do all that and more. Now that you have a bird’s eye view of the process, it’s time to dig into drawing with the Pen tool. Photoshop CS5: The Missing Manual 540
Drawing Paths with the Pen Tool Drawing Paths with the Pen Tool The Pen tool made its debut in Adobe Illustrator way back in the late ’80s and of- fered people precision and control the likes of which they’d never seen. The only problem was that the tool was (and still is) darn hard to use. It was met with all kinds of resistance from the artistic community because it didn’t conform to the way folks were used to working with digital graphics (not to mention pens and pencils). In- stead of dragging to draw a line, when you use the Pen tool, you create anchor points and control handles, which are collectively referred to as vector paths or Bezier curves (named for their inventor). The handles aren’t actually part of the line; they’re little levers you use to control each line segment’s shape (see Figure 13-3). As you learned back in Chapter 2 (page 52), you can edit and resize vectors without losing quality. For example, you can adjust an object’s points and paths (see Figure 13-3, bottom) to tweak its shape and then use Free Transform (page 263) to resize, rotate, distort, warp, or flip your object. When it’s just right, you can fill the shape with color (page 564), trace its outline with one of the painting tools (page 563), or use it to create a layer mask (page 566). Figure 13-3: Top: The mighty Pen tool lives near the middle of the Tools panel. Bottom: This boomerang shape is made from a series of points and paths. The points mark the beginning and end of each line segment; in Photoshop-ese, a line segment is called a path. To change a path’s shape, you can drag the points, adjust the control handles, and add or subtract points. Control handles Anchor point chapter 13: drawing with the vector tools 541
Drawing Paths with the Pen Tool With the Pen tool, you have to click twice to create a line: The first click creates the line’s starting anchor point, the second click adds the ending anchor point, and Photoshop automatically adds the path in between. It’s kind of like digital connect- the-dots: each time you add a new anchor point, a path appears connecting it to the previous point. You use two different kinds of anchor points to tell Photoshop whether you want a curved or straight path: • Smooth. Use these anchor points when you want your path to curve. If you click to set an anchor point and then drag in any direction—before releasing your mouse button—the Pen tool creates a control handle that you can drag to make the next path curve. (The direction you drag is extremely important, as you’re about to learn.) When you click to make the second anchor point, Photo- shop creates the actual path—a curved line between the two points. • Corner. Use these anchor points when you want to draw a straight line. Simply click without dragging to set a point, and you don’t get any control handles; in- stead, the Pen tool creates points connected by straight paths. To draw perfectly horizontal or vertical lines, press and hold the Shift key while you click to set more points. This limits the Pen tool to drawing straight lines at angles that are multiples of 45 degrees (45, 90, and so on), which is great when you want to draw geometric shapes. Once you have, well, a handle on points and handles, you can make any shape you want. In the following pages you’ll learn how to create both straight and curved paths. Drawing Straight Paths The easiest thing you’ll ever do with the Pen tool is create straight paths. Here’s how: 1. Press P to grab the Pen tool. The Pen tool lives above the big T in the Tools panel, and its icon looks like a fountain pen nib. 2. Choose Paths mode (page 540) in the Options bar. The Paths mode button (shown in Figure 13-2) looks like a fountain pen nib in a box with little square corners. You could use Shape Layers mode for this exercise, but in that mode, Photoshop starts filling your path with color as soon as you start drawing it, which gets visually confusing (and these techniques are hard enough as it is!). So to see only the path itself—with no fill color—work in Paths mode. 3. Mouse over to your document and click once to create your first anchor point. Photoshop puts a tiny black square where you clicked (Figure 13-4, top). Photoshop CS5: The Missing Manual 542
Drawing Paths with the Pen Tool Figure 13-4: Each time you click, Photoshop adds another anchor point, and connects each point First click with a path that forms your shape. If you want to start a new path instead of adding to an existing one, just tap the Esc key and then click somewhere else in your image. Second click 4. Move your cursor to the right of the first anchor point and click to create a second anchor point. Photoshop adds a straight line that connects the two points. 5. Move your cursor down an inch or so and click to create another anchor point. Photoshop continues to connect the points with paths after you place each point. If you want to create a perfectly horizontal or vertical line, press and hold the Shift key as you click to add another anchor point (you can also use this trick to create lines at 45-degree angles). 6. When you’re finished drawing your lines, press the Esc key or �-click (Ctrl- click on a PC) elsewhere in your document. The anchor points you created disappear and you see a thin gray line represent- ing the path you just drew. 7. If you want to move an anchor point to change the angle of your line, grab the Direct Selection tool by pressing Shift-A until the white arrow appears in the Tools panel. The Direct Selection tool it lives in the toolset just below the big T in the Text tool (see Figure 13-4, bottom). You’ll learn more about this tool when you start editing paths on page 557. 8. Drag one of your line’s anchor points. As long as you hold your mouse button down, you can move the point wherever you want. When you get it positioned just right, release the mouse button. Congratulations! You’ve just drawn your first path with the Pen tool. Enjoy your suc- cess because it gets a lot harder from here on out. chapter 13: drawing with the vector tools 543
Drawing Paths with the Pen Tool Drawing Curved Paths Drawing curves with the Pen tool is more complicated because you have to use the control handles mentioned on page 542 to tell Photoshop how big you want the curve to be and in what direction you want it to go. Here’s what you do: 1. With the Pen tool selected, click your document to set your first anchor point and—without letting go of your mouse button—drag to the left or right to make the point’s control handles appear. The control handles pop out from the point you created, and one of the handles sticks to your cursor. These handles indicate the direction your path will take; if you drag to the right, your path curves right when you add your next anchor point; if you drag left, your path curves left. For this exercise, drag upward and to the right about half an inch, and then release your mouse button (see Figure 13-5, top). Note: It’s next to impossible to get a sense of how the control handles work just by reading about them. So if you’re near a computer, turn it on and fire up Photoshop so you can follow along. Better yet, visit this book’s Missing CD page at www.missingmanuals.com/cds and download the file Curve.tif so you can practice drawing the curves shown in Figure 13-5. Figure 13-5: Drag to the right The direction you drag the control handle de- First click termines the direction of the next path you Second click draw; you can watch Drag to the right the path between two points twist and Note the direction of the drag bend as you drag the on the control handle handle. And notice that the two opposing handles are connected and they move in tandem. If you pull a handle longer, the curve gets bigger. 2. About two inches to the right of the first point, click to add a second point and, while holding your mouse button down, drag the new handle downward and to the right half an inch, and then release your mouse button. In step 1, you pulled the first handle upward and the curve obediently bent up- ward. By dragging this second control handle downward, your next curve heads downward (see Figure 13-5, middle). Photoshop CS5: The Missing Manual 544
Drawing Paths with the Pen Tool 3. Create a third point by clicking and dragging upward and to the right. The path that appears when you click to add this third point curves downward because you pulled the control handle downward in the previous step. Drag the third point’s control handle upward and slightly to the right to make the curve shown in Figure 13-5, bottom. 4. When you’re finished, press the Esc key to let Photoshop know you’re done drawing your path. You can also �-click (Ctrl-click on a PC) elsewhere in your document. You’ve just drawn your first curved path! With practice, you’ll get the hang of using the control handles to determine the direction and size of the curves. And as you may have guessed, the drawing process gets even more complicated from here. Converting Anchor Points As you learned on page 542, there are two kinds of anchor points in Photoshop: smooth and corner. To draw complicated paths, you need to know how to switch between these types so you can create curves within a single path that go the same direction. (Take a peek ahead at Figure 13-7, bottom, to see what this looks like.) To do that, you start by creating a series of curves, and then convert some of the smooth points to corner points. Here’s how: 1. With the Pen tool active, click and hold with your mouse button to create your first point, and then drag the control handle up and away from the anchor point to set the direction of your next curve (Figure 13-6, top left). Release your mouse button when you’re ready to make your next anchor point. Note: To practice drawing these paths yourself, visit this book’s Missing CD page at www.missingmanuals. com/cds and download the file ComboPath.tif. 2. Move your cursor an inch or so to the right, and then click to set your second point to the right of the first and drag downward (Figure 13-6, top right). When your path has the curve you want, release your mouse button. 3. Move your cursor another inch to the right and then click and drag downward to create a third point (Figure 13-6, middle). 4. Hop right another inch and then click and drag downward once again to create a fourth point (Figure 13-6, bottom). chapter 13: drawing with the vector tools 545
Drawing Paths with the Pen Tool Figure 13-6: Drag upwards Here’s how to draw a series of curves using smooth anchor points (the kind you get by dragging as First click Second click you set an anchor point). With smooth anchor points, your paths curve in the direction you dragged Drag downwards the control handle of the preceding anchor point. Third click Drag downwards Fourth click Drag downwards 5. Head over to the Tools panel and grab the Convert Anchor Point tool (Figure 13-3). The Convert Anchor Point tool is tucked away inside the Pen toolset (its icon looks like an upside-down V). Just click and hold on the Pen tool to see the rest of the toolset, and then give it a click (for unknown reasons, the Shift-P trick doesn’t work for the Insert, Delete, or Convert Anchor Point tools). 6. Drag the bottom control handle that’s attached to your third anchor point (see Figure 13-7, top) up so it’s close to the opposite control handle on the same anchor point. The Convert Anchor Point tool “breaks” the bottom half of the control handle away from the top half so it can move all by itself. This nifty little maneuver con- verts the anchor point from a smooth point to a corner point, and changes your path from a smooth curve to a sharp angle. Once you break control handles apart, they behave much like the hands of a clock and you can move them inde- pendently to adjust the angle and curve of your path. Photoshop CS5: The Missing Manual 546