Rangefinder Magazine
May 2005

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Photoshop CS Beginners’ Guide to the Pen Tool and Paths by Dave Cross

This is one of a series of Adobe® Photoshop® tutorials sponsored by Adobe Systems and the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP) to be reprinted in Rangefinder taken from the Photoshop User magazine, the official publication of NAPP (www.photoshopuser.com).

While pixels dominate the world of Photoshop, somewhat hidden away is the multi-talented Pen tool and its very interesting bag of tricks. Here’s a quick overview of some of the things you can do with the Pen tool, including creating, modifying, and using a Path or Clipping Paths.

The concept of the Pen tool (P) is fairly simple: Click once every time you want to change direction. To draw a single line, click once to establish the start of the line and a second time to indicate the end of the line. (Note: If you want a straight line, hold down the Shift key before you start clicking.) Each time you click, you create an Anchor Point, and a Path is automatically generated that joins those Anchor Points together.

To ensure you are using Paths, click on the middle icon—the one that looks like a pen—in the group of three icons in the Pen tool Options Bar.

Creating a Path:
If you continue clicking, you’ll “draw” a polygonal Path. In this example, we clicked to create a series of Anchor Points that resulted in the Path shown. Now we have a Path in our document, but nothing will actually change in the image display until we do something with this Path (see “Using a Path”).

To create a curved Path, click-and-hold the mouse button (rather than clicking once), then drag. As you drag, you’re creating a “direction line” that tells the Pen tool how big and at what angle you want the curve. Drag a short direction line, and your curve will be short—vary the angle of the direction line to control the angle of the curve. With some practice, you’ll get a feel for how to control the curves.

Once you’ve finished creating your curvy shape, look in the Paths palette, and note that the Path you created is called Work Path. Double-click on the name to change it. To save the Path as part of the document, you must then save the document.

You can also create a Path from a selection: Use any selection tool to make a selection in an image, then from the Paths palette pop-up menu, choose Make Work Path. A dialog prompts you to enter a Tolerance number, which determines how accurately the Path will follow the selection. In general, use the lowest number possible (0.5); once the Path is created, you can always modify it if you don’t like the results.

Modifying a Path:
You can alter a Path in a couple of ways, for example:
• Use the Direct Selection tool (the white arrow in the Toolbox) to click on Anchor Points and reposition them or to click on the Path and drag its position.
• Click on an existing Path with the Pen tool to add a new Anchor Point or click on an existing Anchor Point with the Pen tool to delete the Anchor Point. (This is the same as using the Add Anchor Point Tool and Delete Anchor Point Tool found under the Pen tool in the Toolbox.)

Using a Path:
Once you’ve created a Path, what can you do with it? With the Path displayed, the buttons at the bottom of the Paths palette will allow you do the following:

• The leftmost button will Fill the Path with your current foreground color.
• The middle button will Stroke the Path with your current foreground color.
• The rightmost button will make a selection from the Path.

Unlike other selection tools that require you to hold down certain keys to adjust the selection, you can use the Pen methods described above to adjust the Path, and then make a selection from that Path. (As an alternative to using the button, you can press Cmd-Return (PC: Ctrl-Enter) to make a selection from the Path.)

Note: Filling or stroking a Path doesn’t automatically create a new layer. If you want the object to be on its own layer, create a new layer before filling or stroking the Path.

For variation, hold down the Option (Alt) key as you click the Stroke button, and you’ll be able to choose from a long list of options for Stroking the Path with anything from the Brush to the Blur tools. (Whichever tool you choose will use that tool’s current settings, such as Brush Size, Opacity, etc., so you’ll want to set those options before using this Stroke option.)

In the examples below, we chose a soft, 90-pixel Brush (top) and a smaller hard Brush with the Simulate Pressure box checked (bottom).

Clipping Paths:
If we want to bring a Photoshop image into a page-layout program, but the image needs to have a transparent background, then we create a Clipping Path. This is a special kind of Path that tells the other software program to display and print only the information inside the Path—ignoring the other pixel information. (Clipping Paths serve no purpose within Photoshop and are only used when you plan to import the image into another program.) Here’s how:

STEP ONE: Create a Path using the Pen tool or by making a Path from a selection and name the Path. Now, from the Paths palette pop-up menu, choose Clipping Path.

STEP TWO: Make sure the Path you created and named appears in the Clipping Path dialog. Leave the Flatness amount blank, and your output device will determine the number. You can use these rough guidelines: inkjet printers—leave it blank; laser printers—two to three device pixels; high-resolution image setters—seven to 10 device pixels

STEP THREE: Click OK to close the Clipping Path dialog, then Save as a Photoshop EPS file. When you place the image into a page-layout program, the Clipping Path will “hide” the image background.

Paths have interesting and varied possibilities, from creating shapes to making selections. You could say that they can lead you on the Path to creativity. Okay, maybe you wouldn’t say that, but you definitely will want to take advantage of Paths!