Like I said in the previous tutorial we will break an image’s outline to curved and straight paths.
Note: I will refer to the tutorial on keyboard shortcuts for Zooming and Scrolling at this point as we start going into the more complicated aspects of this series of Path Tutorials.
We’ll use the image below (pan.jpg).
Observe that the silhouette of the pan as different segments of curves with varying degrees. Some are steep paths, some are long and flat.
Let us start by creating a point at the angle where the handle meets the lid.
1. Select the Pen Tool (Press P). Create first point.
2. Create another point where the lid and the lid’s handle meet and hold/drag the mouse to create a mountain curve. As you drag the mouse, note how the arc moves and try to trace its curvature to the outline of the pan. Release the mouse when you matched the edge.
(Win: alt / Mac: option)
Before starting another point and path, hold down the ALT key and click the last point created with the pen tool. I call this ‘neutralizing’ the point. I could explain why we have to do this but as this is a tutorial for beginners I find this a necessary step without going into details why.
Once, we ‘neutralize’ the point we are going to move on to where the next point is going to be. So try and anticipate – from where we are starting – where our next point will be by imagining how we will draw the curve with the pen tool. In this case I would say the center of the lid handle. As shown below:
Then neutralize the point again, figure out where the next point is to trace the outline, and so on and so forth.
To give you an idea, I drew segments of paths around our image (differentiated by colors) to show how I would do the subsequent curves. Note there are a couple of straight lines, if necessary you can hold the SHIFT key to create a perfectly perpendicular line.
Here’s a video of how I did it.
I would suggest taking another image and figure out where the segments of curved paths will be before actually clicking on the first point. And remember to always ‘neutralize’ after each point.
