Show me the Path

Many Photoshop users shy away from paths, mainly because the way they are drawn greatly differs from our “traditional” idea of drawing things. Once you get used to it, though, paths are really easy, and you can use them for a variety of different purposes.

What you can do with paths:

❍ Fill them with colour to create vector graphics

❍ Convert them to selections when the standard selection tools fail to accurately select the area you want.

❍ Use them as vector masks to hide areas of a layer (more on vec-tor masks in the next chapter)

What’s The Point?

Paths are primarily seg-ments of lines and curves which terminate at points called Anchor Point. Each anchor point then has two Direction Lines—one which shows the direction of the segment entering the point, and one for the segment leaving it.

There are two types of anchor points:

❍ Smooth Points, which con-nect smooth curves.

Direction lines on smooth points always move togeth-er to keep this smoothness intact.

❍ Corner Points, which, as the name suggests,

con-A typical path with con-Anchor Points and Direction Lines

Smooth Points and Corner Points

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nect segments at a sharp corner.

The more anchor points a path has, the more control you are going to have over its shape, but too much of a good thing can be bad—many unnecessary anchor points are going to make the path difficult to edit.

Enough talk; let’s begin creating our paths.

The Pen Tool

You can draw paths one anchor point at a time using the Pen tool , or use the Freeform Pen tool to draw the path freehand.

When you select either of these tools, use the option bar to select whether you want to create a shape layer (a new layer will be created and the

path will fill with colour as you draw it) or create an empty path.

If you’d like to see a preview of the path as you draw it, click on the inverted arrow on the option bar and select Rubber Band. We recom-mend using this option, especially if you’re new to vectors and paths.

Drawing The Path

To draw a path with the Pen tool, click to create an anchor point, and drag the mouse to set the direction for the path. To create a closed path (one without a beginning or an end), work your way back to the first anchor point; you will notice a small “O” appear next to the cursor—this means that the path will be closed when you click.

Turn on the Rubber Band to see the path as it is being made

The Path Options

By default, all anchor points are smooth points. However, with a few handy keyboard shortcuts, you can customise your path as you draw it:

❍ To create a corner point, hold down the [Alt] key, then click and drag to create the corner point.

❍ The direction lines for smooth points are always in the same line. To create a corner with different direction lines for the incoming and outgoing curves, Click, Drag and hold down [Alt]

before you release the mouse button. You can now change the direction line of the curve leaving the anchor point. It’s a little tricky, so it will take a couple of trials before you get it right.

You can edit your path while you are drawing it as well:

❍ To add an anchor point on a segment that you’ve already drawn, just move the mouse cursor over the path. A small “+” sign will appear next to the cur-sor, meaning that you can add an anchor point there.

❍ To delete an anchor point, click on it (a small “-” sign will appear next to the cur-sor before you do this)

❍ To delete your last you click, a new path

Hold down [Alt] to create corner points

Fiddling with direction lines

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will begin. To resume drawing the path, click on the last anchor point you created (a small “/” will appear next to the cursor before you do this)

❍ To convert a smooth point to a corner point, hold down [Alt] and click on it

❍ To convert a corner point to a smooth point, hold down [Alt], click on it and drag the mouse to set the direction lines

❍ To move anchor points or adjust the direction lines, hold down [Ctrl] and click on the point. To prevent both direction lines from moving together, hold down [Ctrl] and [Alt] and then move the direction line.

Using the Path

Once you’ve created your path, the Paths palette lets you choose what you want to do with the path.

You will find it in next to the Layers palette at the bottom-right of your screen. If you don’t see this on your workspace, select Window > Paths.

Click on the arrow at

the top-right corner to bring up the Paths palette menu. From here, you can choose to save the path, delete it, fill it with colour, or stroke it.

Stroking a path means that the tool you select from the Stroke Path dialog will be used along the path. For example, if you draw a path in the shape of an “S”, stroking it with a paintbrush means that the Brush tool will be used to draw the same “S” shape.

You can also use paths for greater control over selections. If you’ve drawn a selection using any of the standard selection tools, editing its shape can be quite troublesome. Instead, you can use the pen tool to draw a path around the area you want to select, tweak it as much as you like, and finally use the Convert Path to

The Stroke Path options

Selection button at the bottom of the Paths palette to turn it into a selection.

Alternatively, you could first make the selection, convert it to a path by using the Convert Selection to Path button [small image], tweak it using the path tools, and then convert it back to a selection.