Many advanced options are hidden in Photoshop's Brushes palette. By adjusting the spacing we can create a custom brush to make dotted lines. This method uses guidelines and the paintbrush tool.
Difficulty: Easy
Time Required: 2 minutes
Here's How:
- Select the paintbrush tool (B).
- Open the brushes palette if it is not showing. (Windows -> Brushes)
- Click on Brush Presets and choose an appropriately-sized, hard, round brush.
- Click on Brush Tip Shape and set the spacing to a number higher than 100%. The preview will give you an idea how the spacing will look.
- While you're in the Brush Tip Shape properties panel, you can also adjust the diameter and hardness if desired.
- Click Scattering in the Brushes Palette and make sure scatter is set to 0%.
- Turn on rulers (View -> Rulers) if they are not already showing.
- Drag out guidelines for a rectangle.
- Hold the shift key down and click in each corner of the rectangle. The shift key constrains the paintbrush to straight lines.
Tips:
- Once you have a properly spaced brush you can paint dotted lines in freehand.
- You can save your custom brush as a preset by choosing New Brush from the brushes palette menu.
- Very small brushes sometimes skip a dot. I don't know why, but you can fill them in by clicking once with the brush in the skipped spot.
- Experiment with shaped brushes and the Scattering options in the brushes palette. There's some powerful stuff hidden in the brushes palette!
