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Mastering The Pen Tool
Author: Ravager
With inspiration and guidance from a friend from another website, I have decided to type up this tut. Alright, the pen tool is one of the most neglected tools of photoshop. Once you learn how to use it properly it will serve you for years to come. Many people don't know how to fully use this accursed tool. Reading this tutorial will help you all they way in conquering the infernal Pen.This will be my most in depth tut, I hope you enjoy it and learn from it. Anyways, on with the PS'ing!
[Break= Part 1]
---------------------Huh? Paths?---------------------
First, I am going to bore you with all of this :P but please pay attention. A path is made of anchor points and segments. A segment is a line that actually makes up the path and anchor points are points that are connected to form segments.
Types of Anchor Points
There are two kinds of anchor points:
1. Smooth Anchor Points- When curved segments meet at an anchor point and "smoothly" run through it and continue a new curve on the opposite side of the anchor point.
2. Corner Anchor Points- Unlike the smooth anchor point, a corner anchor point doesnt run through "smoothly" a corner anchor point gives the curve a drastic change in direction. For example in this shape /\ the corner anchor point would be where the two segments converge.
Types of Segments
There are also two types of segments.
1.Straight Segments- As you might expect, these are the easiest to draw.
2.Curved Segments- These are a bit more difficult, what directs these are things called direction points and direction lines. I will explain these a little bit later.
Ok done with the boring stuff lets get on to the drawing!
---------------------Using the Pen Tool---------------------
Click down on the pen tool and hold. More icons should come up. Just to familiarize you with them I will explain them briefly before we start. (Described from top to bottom).
[Break= Part 2]
-The Pen Tool is what you will be using the most frequently. Using this will allow you to make the straight lines and curves as I have described above.
-The Freeform Pen Tool allows you to quickly create your own paths without really needing to understand much about the pen tool and how to make the paths you want. This may sound like your solution to the pen tool! But it isnt. You have to draw them freehand and we are human so you are bound to make very crude curves and lines.
-The Add Anchor Point Tool allows you to insert an additional anchor point onto an already existing segment of a path. This is particulalrly useful in situations such as having already created a curve, but later on you want to change it into something more complicated than that. What's nice about this tool is you can do it without having to set it! Just hover your mouse over a segment and click it.
-The Delete Anchor Point Tool does exactly what you are thinking. It deletes an anchor point already existing in your path. Deleting an anchor point takes the segments on both sides of the deleted anchor point and merges them together in one large segment. What's nice about this tool is you can do it without having to set it! Just hover your mouse over an anchor point and click it.
-The Convert Anchor Point Tool converts a [b]smooth anchor point[bi] into a corner anchor point. It also converts corner anchor points into smooth anchor points.
Making Straight Segments
This is the easiest part of making paths. Create a new document and give yourself plenty of room to fool around in. Select the Pen Tool and click once to make an anchor point. Click yet again in a different spot of your document and it will create a segment!
Click a few more times in your document and start to get a shape.This path is considered an open path because you haven't closed the shape yet.
In order to close the path you need to move your pen tool over your first anchor point and the icon will change slightly. It will show a closed O next to the pen. Click on your first anchor point and it will connect, closing the path.
Once you are done with your path you can delete it if you wish by pressing the 'delete' key twice (NOT THE BACKSPACE KEY).
[Break= Part 3]
Making Curved Segments
Learning how to make proper curves will take a little bit more time than learning how to make straight segments. But just like anything else, once you know how to do it, it becomes easier.
In order to start to make a curve, click with your pen tool and drag it a little bit. In my example i dragged down. This influences the direction of the curve. Hold down shift and drag to be able to make straight segments.
Hopefully you notice that as you drag, two lines with points on the end of them diverge from the anchor point, these are the direction points and direction segments. The length of the direction segments influences the curve of the segment.
Now create another anchor point but this time, drag upward. A curve between the two anchor points will be created!
The principle behind this little excercise is to notice how the curve was formed. For the first point u dragged down and the second point u dragged up. Just like the direction of the curve.
So now you are probably getting ahead of me. If we dragged both points down, this would be the outcome.
It creates an 'S' shape. You might be thinking that this breaks the law of the direction segments. But if you think about it, it doesn't. You dragged down first and it starts to curve down, and the second point you dragged down as well, but in order for the curved segment to be able to come from above, down onto the point, it would need to curve up first.
Transiting Between Curved Segments and Straight Segments
For many reasons you might want to create a path with both curved segments and straight segments. Switching between both is fairly straightforward (excuse the pun please, it wasnt intended).
Start off by creating a couple straight segments like so.
And then add a curve like you would any other way.
Then if you want to switch back to straight segments, just click where you want the segment to start, (the curve will connect to this point), and also click to where you want the segment to end.
[Break= Part 4]
Continuing Paths
If you have a path and later on want to continue that path, take your Pen Tool and hover over an anchor point and you will see the "continue path" icon appear. Note that this does not work on closed paths.
The Freeform Pen Tool
Like I mentioned above, you don't need to know much about paths to use the freeform pen, if you are a noob that is a good thing.
All you need to do is click and drag to make your path. When you release the mouse button, your path is complete.
---------------------Altering Paths---------------------
After that lengthy section you should now be comfortable with creating paths. But now we move on to editing them. When you create a path, chances are, its not exactly the way you want it to be. Thats where these techniques come in handy.
Selecting Paths
Now we will talk about how to select paths or just little parts of them to be edited.
If you quickly want to select an entire path then grab the Path Component Selection Tool. This can be found under the black mouse icon.
To select a component just click on it.
[Break= Part 5]
Direct Selection Tool can be found same place the other path selection tool is (See last screenshot of toolbar). This allows you to select individual path segments and anchor points to alter. To select a segment, just click it.
If you want to select an anchor point, just click the point.
Now that you know how to select pieces of paths or even whole paths for that matter, lets learn about altering them.
Moving Straight Segments
Straight Segments are simple to move. Just take the [b]direct selection tool[b] and click on the segment and drag it to relocate it.
Moving Curved Segments
To move a curved segment, first click on the segment with the Direct Selection Tool. You then need to Shift+click on both the segment's anchor points to select them:
Once the anchor points are selected, drag the segment around to relocate it.
[Break= Part 6]
Reshaping Curved Segments
There are two ways to reshape curved segments. The first way just stretches or compresses the curve. The second way alters the direction segments to alter the entire curve.
Stretching and Compressing
First click the segment with the Direct Selection Tool, and then make sure that neither of its anchor points are selected, or that only one anchor point is selected (if both are selected then you will simply move the segment, as described above). You can deselect the anchor point(s) as necessary by Shift+clicking on them.
Then click the segment and drag it as desired to compress and/or stretch it.
Changing the Direction Segments
If you drag the directional segments on an anchor point, it changes the curve on both sides of the point.
To change a directional segment, click on the directional point on the end of the segment with the direct selection tool.
Ending Anchor Points
In addition to changing the curves like above, you are also able to change the type of each anchor point. Remember the tool I mentioned a long time ago called the Convert Anchor Point Tool? This is what we are going to be using for this. The quick way to bring up the Convert Anchor Point Tool is to hold 'alt' while hovering above an anchor point.
Transiting from a Corner Anchor Point into a Smooth Anchor Point
To convert a corner anchor point into a smooth anchor point, click on the point while holding the 'alt' key and drag in a direction to do so.
Making a corner anchor point without direction segments
To transit a smooth point into a corner point with no direction segments, just click once on the point you wish to convert with the Convert Anchor Point Tool.
Making a corner point with direction segments
to turn a smooth point into a corner point with direction segments, click on either one of the directional points with the convert anchor point tool and drag it around until it looks the way you wish.
Making a corner point with only one direction segment
It is possible to make a corner point with only one directional segment as well. This means that the segment on the side of the point with the direction line will be a curve as it leaves the point, while the segment without the direction line will be a straight line as it leaves the point.
To make a corner point with one direction segment, all you do is take the Convert Anchor Point Tool and click the anchor point on the side you do NOT want the curve to be on and drag it to its middle anchor point until it vanishes.
Thats it! This is all about the pen tool. Once again lots of this was from a friend of mine and credit goes to him as well. Not solely mine. But hopefully you guys find it useful.
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