CAA: Christian Anime Alliance

Ok, so I hear this is pretty hard to explain, but I'm dying to know--How do you use the pen tool in Photoshop? I need to get a thinner outline for my drawings, but I really have no clue where to start. If any of you know of any good, thorough sites that might be able to help, feel FREE to post them here, especially if you don't want to spend lots of time explaining it yourself! XD Anyways, any help would be GREATLY appreciated!!

Thanks!

I do not use the pen tool in Photoshop because it's tricky. To the best of my knowledge, you cannot change the line thickness of the pen tool. Perhaps someone else here can answer your question better or give a tutorial site.

But personally, if forced to use the pen tool in your situation, I would convert the line I drew with the pen tool into a selection, then use the Edit>Stroke command with whatever pixel thickness I desired.

The pen tool can be just as thick as you want it to be.

to use the pen tool, instead of drawing like you would with a pencil or a brush, you just click where you want a segment of it to lead. This will create a straight line to the new vertex your just created. To create a curve in the line, use the point convert tool and click on a vertex. after that, draw the mouse from the vertex. this will create arms.

You can draw these arms anywhere you like. Wherever you drag them will have an effect on the curve.

To fill in the line, simply click on the paths tab. to see which path you want to fill.

Next, click the brush (or pencil) tool and select the settings you want for your brush.

then, click on the trace button.

BAM

You just drew a perfectly curved line.

and, there ya go.

If you need more help, just tell me. I'll try my best to help you. ^_^

the pen tool is designed for two purposes: creating a highly controllable, scalable fill (colors can be easily altered) and creating an even weight line that curves and twists a lot.

The pen tool is whats called a "vector drawing tool" as opposed to a "raster drawing tool". Raster tools such as the paintbrush or pencil tools color the pixels individually. A vector tool (the pen) uses a mathematical set of points and angles to create a line or an area.

To use the pen tool to create a fill area you start on (my preference) the most pointed corner on the shape you're going to create. You click and lay out a start point, then lay in the next point. Dragging as you click allows you to create curves by moving "handles". This can also be done after the fact to adjust the shape thanks to the path and direct selection tools (they look like standard mouse arrows) and the convert point tool. Continue laying points in around the edge of your chosen shape, then finish back where you started. My best suggestion is to experement with the tool and see how it handles in your hands.

I don't recommend the pen tool for outlining drawings actually, since it results in no line weight variation, and therefore a very flat drawing. It can work for buildings though (I never have used photoshop for drawing path lines... just illustrator). What I have done is made very small brush stroke shaped fills and outlined that way.. but that process takes FOREVER.

I will say the tool is excellent for cel shading though, due to the clean lines that resulted.

I use Freehand to do this but I don't know how to avoid the whole 'outline' or whatever warping when you use the 'handles' to manipulate one part. How do you avoid this?

The pen tool can be just as thick as you want it to be.

Really? <has lost photoshop manual> How/where do you control this?

google photoshop pen tutorials, it will come up with a bunch, the pen tool is a very powerful tool in photoshop, its great to know how to use

This is a nice pen tool tutorial: http://www.imanimetions.net/tutorial/tutorial.php?view=pentut

Personally I use Illustrator to make all my vectors since it's a little easier to handle the pen tool in there. Plus, in Photoshop if you stoke the line with too big of a brush it just looks stupid rather then like a nice thick line.

If you want a thin line for your drawings though then use the pen tool and stroke it with a brush of size 1 or 2. That will give you a thin line for sure. The site that has the tutorial I linked to above has some other tutorials where you use the pen tool. You should check those out, even if you don't want to do the actual tutorial since it shows other features of the pen tool.