Pen Tool - Tutorial 1

World Domination's Pen Tool Tutorials - Tutorial 1 =Next Tutorial->

Many people hate the pen tool. This is simple because they do not know how to use it properly. Once you know how to use the tool properly it will become one of your favorite tools, as it is a very powerful tool.

This tutorial is the first tutorial of a series of Pen Tool tutorials. This Tutorial is all about make shapes with the pen tool. The next tutorial will be about sections with the pen tool. Other Pen Tool tutorials will follow.

First off to use the pen tool click the pen tool icon [] on the toolbar on the left side of your workspace.


The Shape layers option [] is used for drawing and filling in shapes. It will fill it in with whatever your foreground color is. This is the option we will want to use for this tutorial.

Drawing shapes with straight lines

This is rather simple. To draw a straight-lined shape with the pen tool simply click where you want to start your image. This will add a node (a little black/gray box). Next just click somewhere else to create another node. The two nodes will automatically be connected by a line.
Once you make a complete shape, which means you will connect the begin node with the end node, it will fill the shape in.


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Drawing shapes with curved lines

This is a bit trickier. (This is where many people give up on the Pen Tool, but please don't give up yet!!)

Just as before, click where you want to start drawing, and this will once again create a node, just like it did before. Next click where you want your next node, BUT DO NOT LET GO OF THE MOUSE BUTTON. Now you can drag your mouse around and create a curved line. (Note: with the Pen Tool you can only create 90 degrees or less curves.)

Now you have two options after this. First you can click somewhere else, and it will automatically make another curved line, based on your last, for you. Watch the video below for an example.


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This is not always good, especially when rendering or creating other selections. So what you need to do to keep it from making its own curve is to hold ALT and click on the node you last made. This allows you to make a custom curved line. Below is a video to help show what I mean.


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Many people that try to use the pen tool don't know of this, so they get frustrated with it always creating it's own curved lines so they usually give up on using it.

Some other tips on the pen tool

You can move the path you made around by using the 'Path Selection Tool.'[]

You can also move nodes around by using the 'Direct Selection tool'[] and holding the Sift key. You Can drag nodes in any direction you please.


[size=1][i] Please have annotations enabled for this video.

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