Using the pen tool.

I know many people when using Photoshop (I'm using Photoshop CS) don't even go near the pen tool because they either can't use it or don't know what to use it for. In this tutorial hopefully I'll be helping you to get a lot more confident with using the pen tool.

What can the pen tool be used for?
The pen tool can be used for a number of purposes, it can be used to creating smooth lines and shapes, these can then be followed with the brush for cool line-style art, or the pen tool can be used to create shapes. With creating shapes you can also select areas of a picture much more accurately than if you used say the magnetic lasso tool *shudder*. The pen tool can be used to create paths which are saved in your paths menu (useful if you later want to go badk and edit them) or it can be set to fill the pixels with a colour.

Using the pen tool to create shapes
Okay so we're going to create some basic shapes to get used to the pen tool and the way it works.

The pen tool works by creating a set of anchor points and then it plots a line through them, when you set an anchor points you click where you want them to be set, holding down the mouse and dragging around means you can adjust the handles of this anchor point and thus the curvature of the line changes.



When you click a new anchor point the line automatically follows the handles of the previous anchor point to give a smooth curve.




But what if you don't want a smooth curve? - Well you can Alt-Click on the anchor point and remove the handle that will follow onto the new line altogether, or you can Alt-Click on the handle to move it around.



No! I've forgotton to add a point, is all lost?!
No, you can easily add a point to the existing path, hover your mouse over the path and you'll see a little + sign appear next to your cursor, click and a new anchor point will be created. You can drag the handles around in the same way as before giving you total freedom with the pen tool.




Wait! I added a point and I need to move it, what do I do?!
For this you simply Ctrl-Click on the anchor point you want to move, you can then easily move that anchor point to whever you want to place it!




Okay so now I've got to grips with the basics of the pen tool, what do I do?!
Well you can use it to fill selected areas, create new shapes, make cool lines or cut out areas from pictures. The last use is a great one as it selects things more accurately than a marquee tool or the lasso tool. It may take more time but ultimately it's far better.

To get a hold of these options right click on your image (while using the pen tool) and you'll get a list of options.
Delete Path - THis deletes the path you've just created with the pen too.
Define Custom Shape - This takes your path and turns it into a vector shape so you can then use it again at a later date. Because it's a vector shape it can be resized without any loss of quality.
Make Selection - This turns your path into a selection of the image, this is particularly useful as using this you can make accurate, smooth selections as the pen tool is able to select partial pixels (whereas the marquee tools can only select whole pixels) and give them a transparency value to make the selection edges a lot smoother.
Fill Path - This fills your path with colour.
Stroke Path - This makes a line following your path and you can select what you want the line to look like, you have the option to have it look like your current selected brush etc.
Free Transform Points - This allows you to move, resize and rotate all the points together.

I hope you've learned a little more about the pen tool from this tutorial, it's a useful tool and one that is often overlooked.

-Matt