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Basic Pen Tool
This tutorial was written as a basic tutorial on the pen tool in Adobe Photoshop 6. It is incomplete at best, but hopefully will provide a good basic understanding of what the pen tool is and how it works. I'm going to assume a fair degree of familiarity with Photoshop here so if you have any trouble or if I leave anything out e-mail me.
Required
File: Pathtool.zip
271 KB
Contains the pathtool.psd file and a plain text version
of the tutorial. [Mac users may need Aladdin
Expander to extract the contents of the zip file.]
1. Open the file "pathtool.psd" in the folder with this text document. It may be useful for you to turn on your grid view and set gridlines to every 100 pixels in the preferences dialog, and to have "snap" checked under the view menu. Click on the layers tab to access the layers palette. The first layer, "background" and second layer, "anchor points" should be visible and no others.
2. Select the Pen tool by clicking on it in the toolbox or simply typing "p". You'll see four green dots labeled one through four. With the pen tool click on the number one dot, then two, then three, then four. Each click will create a new anchor point represented by a small square. Now, move your pen tool over the first anchor point you created on the number one dot. You should see the pen tool icon with a small circle next to it. This means you're about to close your path. Close it by clicking on the first anchor point. You now have a square path, yippeeee. Click on the paths tab to bring up the paths palette. Double click on the "work path" text and give your path a name to save it. Hit File-Save or Ctrl/Command+S to save the psd. You do save frequently right? :)
3. Go back to the layers palette and turn the "direction lines" layer visibility on. You should see a green circle with some blue arrows come into play over your green dots and square path. The green circle is the shape we are going to convert our path to in this step. Hold your cursor over one of the line segments (part of your path between anchor points) and hold down the Ctrl/Command key. The pen tool should turn to a white arrow representing the direct selection tool. You can also select the direct selection tool from the toolbox right above the pen tool or just type "a" but I prefer this method. Click on a line segment with the direct selection tool. The four anchor points will become visible again. Move your cursor over the first anchor point and hold down the alt key. It will turn into a hollow arrow representing the convert point tool which can also be selected from the pen tool fly out but again, I prefer this method. Holding the alt key, click over the anchor point and drag clockwise in the direction of the blue arrow. You should see two "direction lines" pulling out from the anchor point in opposite directions. Make them the same length and angle as the blue arrow and release the mouse. Repeat this for the other three anchor points and your path will match the green circle. Now we have turned our square path into a circular path.. woohoo, now we're cookin' with fire! ;)
Right about now you're thinking "Great.. squares and circles, I can do that with the selection tools easier than this. This is boring, no wonder I never use that thing." Well friends, now it's time to play with shapes and see where this boring ol' circle takes us. Save your psd again.
4. Turn off visibility for the "direction lines" layer and click on the "fun time" layer to make it the active layer. You should see a red shape with red arrows over your green dots and circular path now. Ctrl/Command click (or select the direct selection tool and click) on the top line segment between the number one and two anchor points. You'll see the two direction lines that affect the shape of that line segment become visible. Put your cursor over the little square at the end of the number one direction line, hold down the command key and drag the line down to the tip of the red arrow. Repeat the procedure for the number two direction line. Don't worry if things don't match up with the red shape yet, they will. Ctrl/Command click on the lower line segment between the number three and four anchor points and drag their direction lines to the tip of their respective arrows by Ctrl/Command click dragging again. Now your path should match the shape pretty closely. OK.. cool, this would be a little tougher to do with the selection tools but what is it? Could be a bow-tie, or an hourglass laying on its side, or the shape of an angry cartoon mouth... or the beginnings of an old battle axe, like your teacher... hehe. Save your work.
5. If I'm not mistaken, to make a convincing battle axe we'll need a sharp spike on the top and a rounded area on the bottom where it would be fitted with a handle. But to do this we need more anchor points than we put in there in the first place. Three more to be exact. Turn off the visibility to the "fun time" layer and make the "add anchor points" layer your active layer. Grab your trusty pen tool and click on the path over the green dots labeled 5,6 and 7. Note the plus sign that appears next to the pen tool when you hover over the path. This represents the "add anchor point" tool, which is what you just did.. added three new anchor points. To remove the anchor points you would use the "remove anchor point" tool which is available simply by hovering the pen tool over an existing anchor point. That's easy huh? Anyway, let's do our spike first. Go back up to the number five anchor point, Ctrl/Command click on the anchor point itself and drag it up the dotted green line to the topmost dot. Note that the direct selection tool (white arrow) turns into the path component selection tool (black arrow) when you start dragging.. wow, that's easy too. You should see a horizontal direction line attached to your anchor point. We want this curve to be fairly sharp so we are going to alt click and drag each side of the corner down to the tip of the black arrow. Alt clicking a direction line handle allows you to adjust each side of the direction line independently of the other, whereas command clicking adjusts both sides evenly, maintaining a straight direction line and smoother curve. The top of your path should match the current shape. Let's put a rounded area on the bottom in now. Put your cursor over the number six anchor point and alt drag the direction line to match the black arrow. Do the same for the number 7 anchor point and your path should match the shape. Almost done now... Save your work!
6. Click on the paths tab to open the paths palette. There is a button at the bottom of the palette that looks like a circular dotted line. Click it and your path turns into a glorious selection shaped like a battle axe. Click on the channels tab to bring up the channels palette and create a new channel by clicking the new icon at the bottom. Your screen will turn black with your selection floating on top. Hit delete (or is it clear on a PC?) and your selection is saved. Go back to the layers palette and turn off visibility to everything but the background, create a new layer and fill your selection with 50% gray. Now you're ready to finish your axe... which could be a whole other tutorial in itself. I wanna see it when you're done! Mine is on the final layer titled "here's mine."
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