00:00Hey there, welcome to another Photoshop tutorial from tutcast.com.
00:03The pen tool is probably one of the most difficult tools in Photoshop to use.
00:07It's a very complex and precise tool, and if you're not very well educated on how the
00:12pen tool works, it's going to be a pain to figure out how to use.
00:17But if you do know how it works, and you can use it properly, it's probably one of your
00:21best friends in Photoshop.
00:23And in this tutorial, I'm going to show you exactly how the pen tool works, and hopefully
00:27you'll learn some of the ins and outs of how to use the pen tool.
00:31Now the pen tool can be found in our tools palette.
00:33It can be accessed either by pressing the P key, or going over to the side here and
00:39clicking on this tool right here, which is our pen tool.
00:42Now at the top in our options bar, we have a few options.
00:45We have our shapes layer option, and we have our paths option.
00:50Those are the two main options that we're going to be discussing in this video.
00:53We're going to start off with the shapes layer.
00:56The shapes layer allows us to use our pen tool to create any sort of shape we want.
01:01Unlike the rectangle tool, which allows you to create predetermined shapes just like this,
01:05the pen tool will allow us to create vector shapes in any sort of shape we want.
01:10So if we grab our pen tool, and make sure that the shapes layer button is checked on,
01:14we can go ahead and start clicking, and create any sort of shape that we want in any shape
01:19and size, just like this.
01:22But the great thing about the pen tool is that we are not limited to creating polygonal
01:26shapes.
01:27The one that you just saw was polygonal, but if we wanted to create curves in our shape,
01:31we can very easily do that as well.
01:33Let me show you how that works.
01:35Let's say you're in the process of creating your shape, and you want to finish your shape
01:38with a curve.
01:39All you have to do is click on the last node here, and then drag your mouse.
01:43You'll notice that a curve starts to form.
01:45You can drag your mouse as far out as you want to create any sort of curve that you
01:49please, just like this.
01:52Now let's say you wanted to create some sort of a circular form.
01:56So for this example, I'm going to be going ahead and tracing out the bottom half of this
02:00orange down here at the bottom, to show you how to create a curvy shape using the pen
02:05tool, and I'm going to show you some of the problems that you may run into when using
02:09the pen tool.
02:10So I'm going to start off by making my first node right around here, and then I'm going
02:14to click and drag somewhere around this area to create our first curve.
02:19Now once that curve is finished, we're going to choose another curvy area somewhere around
02:23this area, and as you can see, it completes the curve for us.
02:28But we may run into a problem when we get to an area like this, a sharper area.
02:31We run into two problems here.
02:33Number one, we can't see where we're going to trace, and number two, when we start making
02:37our line, we have this big curve at the top right corner.
02:40We don't want that.
02:41So problem number one, we can't see underneath.
02:44There's an easy fix for that.
02:46On your keyboard, use the number keys to increase or decrease the opacity of your shape.
02:50So let's say we want to see through a little bit.
02:52We're going to go ahead and press the number four to decrease our opacity of this shape
02:56to 40%.
02:57If you want to increase it later on to 100%, press the number zero.
03:01So let's go back to 40%.
03:03So now that we can see through, we can continue tracing the bottom half of this orange, but
03:07we have a problem.
03:09If we go ahead and try and make a curve here, we have this big loopiness at the top right
03:14corner.
03:15We don't want that.
03:16So we're going to eliminate that curve for now.
03:18So we're going to hold down Alt on a PC or Option on a Mac and click on our last created
03:24node.
03:25This will eliminate the curve that we're about to make, and now we can go ahead with a fresh
03:30start and create a brand new curve just like this, and we can continue around the orange
03:38like that, and we have our completed shape using curves, using the pen tool.
03:43We can once again increase the opacity back to 100%.
03:46Now here's one thing that people get annoyed by.
03:49You can see this line going around our shape.
03:51That's just the path of our vector shape.
03:54To get rid of it, on a Mac, hold down Command Shift, on a PC, hold down Control Shift and
04:00press the letter H. That will hide or show the path of your vector shape.
04:05Now let's say you're not 100% happy with the curves of the shape that you just created
04:09and you want to edit them a little bit.
04:11Well luckily, there's a way to do that.
04:13If we head over to our tools palette, we can go ahead and grab our direct selection tool,
04:17which allows us to edit all aspects of our shape.
04:20We can go ahead and click on that, click on our shape, and then find any of the nodes
04:24that we want.
04:25So we can click on these nodes here, let's say we want to edit this curve right here.
04:28We can click on it, and we can edit the curve of both sides of the nodes, just like this.
04:33We can pull it any way we choose, we can decrease the curve, we can increase the curve, we can
04:38even move the curve up or down.
04:40So we have complete flexibility over how the curves of our object curve around the
04:44shape and we can control it any way we like.
04:48The only problem that you may run into is if you remember a few minutes ago when we
04:51eliminated one of the curves at the top here, we took this node and we eliminated the curve
04:56at the top.
04:57Right now you can't edit the curve right in this corner here, but if you hold down on
05:01a Mac, Command and Option, or on a PC, Control and Alt, we can go ahead and create a brand
05:08new curve by just dragging on that node like that, and we now have that curve back once
05:13again.
05:14So we can go ahead and control it like that, so it's not as sharp as it was before.
05:18But I'm going to go ahead and leave it the way it was.
05:20So if you're looking to edit any of the curves on your vector shape that you just created
05:24using the pen tool, definitely check out the direct selection tool, that will allow you
05:28to edit any of the curves and even add curves if you wanted to.
05:32One more thing I should note, if you right click on the path, we have a few other options.
05:36We can go ahead and add an anchor point so we can add more curves to our object, just
05:41like this.
05:42We can also define it as a shape.
05:45Once again, if you right click on your shape, you can go ahead and click on Define Custom
05:48Shape and name your shape Orange Peel, and it will save it to your shapes library so
05:54you can use it anytime you want in the future.
05:57And of course, one last thing I should probably mention, just like you can with other shape
06:01tools, you can go ahead and add to your shape area, you can subtract, you can intersect,
06:06and you can exclude overlapping shape areas, just like you can using your other shape tools
06:10and selection methods.
06:12And that's pretty much about it for creating custom shapes using the pen tool in Photoshop.
06:16We're now going to quickly discuss what the paths option is.
06:20Now unlike the shapes tool, we cannot create custom shapes using the path tool, but we
06:25can do a few other things.
06:26So let me go ahead and delete this layer.
06:28Now the path option works identical to the shapes option.
06:31So what I'm going to do now, I'm going to make sure to create a new layer.
06:33When you're creating a new path, it's always good to start it on a new layer, not the background
06:38layer.
06:39Now because the path option works identical to the shapes option, I'm going to quickly
06:42go around this orange and create the path, just like this.
06:47And you'll notice that this time it's not filling in with black because we're not creating
06:51a shape, we're only creating the path.
06:54So there we go, we have the path and you can see the path defined by the path that we can
06:58see around the orange.
07:00Now we have a few options this time, a few different options.
07:02We can go ahead and right click on our path.
07:05We can make it as a selection, as you can see we have our make selection dialog box.
07:09We can feather the radius, anti-aliased, any of these options here.
07:13We click OK and we now have a selection from that path.
07:17We can right click the path once again and choose fill path, but the problem with filling
07:21the path, we can fill it with foreground, background, a custom color, pattern, history,
07:25anything like that.
07:26The problem is, unlike using the shapes option, this is not a vector shape, so you can't resize
07:32it and keep the quality like you can when we created a custom shape using the shapes
07:36option in the pen tool.
07:38So that's another option.
07:40We can right click and then click stroke path.
07:42A lot of people wondered what this does.
07:45Basically we can use our brush settings, let me cancel out of this and go into our brush
07:48settings quickly.
07:50And here we have a 13 diameter pixel brush, hardness at 100%.
07:55Going back to the pen tool, right click, stroke path, and we can go ahead and fill
08:01it with our brush settings.
08:02Click OK and it will outline the path for us just like this.
08:06We can also choose to simulate the pressure.
08:10Stroke path, simulate pressure and click OK and you'll notice it kind of fades out towards
08:15the end just like that.
08:16So you can use the stroke path option to really make some nice designs using custom lines,
08:21using your brush settings or your pencil settings or anything like that.
08:24And once again, just like we're able to using the shapes option, we can right click, add
08:29anchor point or we can go ahead and use the direct selection tool to adjust curves on
08:34our path.
08:35We can also go to the top and add to our path, subtract, intersect or exclude just like we
08:40can using the shapes tool and most of the other tools in Photoshop.
08:44So that's pretty much it for the pen tool.
08:46It is a very confusing tool, very complex and very precise.
08:50It may take a while of playing with it to really get used to it, but if you do know
08:54how to use it properly, it can be one of your best friends in Photoshop.
08:58And until next time, this is Howard from tutcast.com.
09:01Take care.
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