Taming The Pen Tool – Part 8

The next part in our Pen Tool tutorial involves the Layers and Path Palettes.

The Layer and Path Palette are usually docked together as a default. To open them you have to go to WINDOWS > LAYERS or WINDOWS > PATHS

Open pan.jpg (hopefully you also saved it after creating the path)

Save and rename the path as discussed in Part 4 of the tutorial.

(CTRL-Win; CMD-Mac)
Open the Path Palette and change the saved path to a selection – that is, hold CTRL and click on the path name.

Once the path turns into a selection, we go to the Layers Palette. Press CTRL-J.

What this does is it will copy our selection to a new layer as shown above.

Click off the new layer we created and go to the Background Layer and make another selection as we did before by CTRL-clicking on our path.

Instead of CTRL-J, do a CTRL-SHIFT-J

What happens this time is instead of copying our selection, it cuts it out of our layer (shown above).

1. Our previous layer copied from our selection. (CTRL-J)

2. New layer with selection cut from our background layer. (CTRL-SHIFT-J)

Save this document (with layers and all) as a psd file.

Taming The Pen Tool – Part 7 (Options)

Hopefully you’ve been practicing on our image trying to get the path around it right. When you notice that you don’t have to go back to redo a path it means you’re on your way to mastering the tool.

Now, notice there’s a little hole on the handle of the pan. This tutorial will explain a few minor things when applying paths.

What we should do is put a path in that hole too so when the image is over another image or a background it will show up in the hole, too. (shown below)

PATH OPTIONS EXPLAINED

Above is the most common used option I set for the pen tool. I really don’t have to explain what the settings mean you can still use the pen tool competently. But for the sake of clarity… or in case these are not your default settings…

1. The pen tool can also be used to create Shape Layers – that is, if you draw a path it creates a new layer with a fill color on it and the path editable. This is useful if you’re creating logos in Photoshop.

I always set this to draw a path (2nd option). What this does is it creates a path in the Path Palette. From there I can save, rename, make selection, stroke, fill, resize a path.

2. The second option basically let’s us use a tool as if it’s another tool. Not much to explain here except if I choose the Pen Tool I want it to behave as a pen tool – so I chose the pen as shown.

3. When Auto Add/Delete is on it just means you can add or remove a point in an existing path.

4. The Pathfinder Options might freak out beginners but basically I set it to the fourth options which when another path is overlapped over another it gets excluded. I always keep it in on exclude (4th option).

You can select path and play around with these options to see what each Pathfinder option does.

As long as you have your settings identically set to the image above you will be fine for now.

Taming The Pen Tool – Part 6

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.

Taming The Pen Tool – Part 5

So far we have only discussed what the basics of the Pen Tool and editing paths. And all we know what to do is make straight paths.

I am going to borrow a couple of terms from origami and apply it to how we create paths. The Mountain and the Valley. Below are two examples of paths and what we will call them throughout these tutorials:

Mountain Path

HOW TO CREATE A MOUNTAIN PATH:

1. Open Test.psd

2. Press P to select the pen Tool. Create a new point by clicking somewhere on the lower left of the document.

3. Create another point over by the right by click/holding on the mouse.

4. The mouse still on hold, drag it down. You will note the path will curve up.

Valley Path

HOW TO CREATE A VALLEY PATH:

1. Open Test.psd. We will do almost the same thing as a Mountain Path but the opposite direction.

2. Press P to select the pen Tool. Create a new point by clicking somewhere on the upper left of the document.

3. Create another point over by the right by click/holding on the mouse.

4. The mouse still on hold, drag it upwards. You will note the path will curve down.

All we need to learn at this point is how to make a Mountain Curve and a Valley Curve with paths. In our upcoming tutorials we will break down an image’s outline into these two types of curves.

Taming The Pen Tool – Part 4

THE PATH PALETTE

This tutorial explains the Path Palette and how to use it.

Open the practice document from the previous tutorials.

Open the PATH PALETTE by going to the menu WINDOWS>PATHS.

It will show us our existing unnamed path. Double click on it.

1. Type the name ‘Practice Path’.

2. Click OK.

We are not working with images yet but most of the chopping involves turning our paths into selections.

TO TURN PATHS INTO A SELECTION:

1. Press/hold CTRL(win)/CMD(mac) key
2. Click on our path in the Path Palette.

WHAT WE’VE LEARNED:

1. Renaming/Saving a Path.

2. Turning a Path into a selection.

Taming The Pen Tool – Part 3

NOTE: Open our previous document.

Select the Pen Tool (Press P).

ANATOMY OF A PATH

1. Path
2. Point

Make the white arrow appear and drag it over a path. Hit DELETE.

Drag the white arrow over a point then hit DELETE.

Drag the white arrow over all the remaining path then hit DELETE.

YOU’VE LEARNED TWO MORE THINGS:

1. How to select a path or a point.

2. How to delete parts of or the whole path.

Taming The Pen Tool – Part 2

NOTE: Open our previous document.

Select the Pen Tool (Press P).

Press/Hold CTRL (mac:CMD) key. The Pen becomes a White Arrow.

Go way up the upper left corner of the document and drag the white arrow down to enclose and select our path. We just selected not only the path but its points.

CTRL still on hold, click anywhere in the document. That deselects a path.

Press/Hold CTRL and drag the white arrow to select a point (any point).

Selected points appear dark, by the way. We can drag the selected point using the white arrow.

TWO MORE THINGS LEARNED:

1. Select and Deselect a path.

2. Select entire points or particular points on a path.

Taming The Pen Tool – Part 1

I have seen tutorials on the Photoshop Pen Tool online and a lot of people gets discouraged by it because it comes off more as a cumbersome tool. What is lacking is a good foundation to mastering the Pen Tool that isn’t 20 lessons long. So I present a short introduction to the Pen Tool and creating Paths that speeds up the learning curve.

To Start: Create a new document in Photoshop (preferably 600px by 600px) that is a nice enough area to practice on.

WHAT THE SHIFT KEY DOES TO PATHS

Select the Pen Tool (Press P).

1. Click somewhere by the left side to create a point.

2. With the SHIFT key on hold the whole time, click somewhere a little bit higher over on the right side then click another point below but slightly left of the 2nd point you created.

3. The shift key still on hold, try making a 45 degree path by clicking a bit higher than point #3.

4. Let’s close the path. Release holding the shift key. Move the pen over to the first point we created.

Notice a little O appears. Click on the point. Closed.

WE’VE LEARNED TWO THINGS:

1. What the SHIFT key does to a path.

2. How to close a path.

NOTE: Save the document for the next tutorial.