From the course: Photoshop 2024 Essential Training

Drawing complex paths - Photoshop Tutorial

From the course: Photoshop 2024 Essential Training

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Drawing complex paths

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- [Instructor] All right, now it's time for us to learn to draw some more complex paths, and we're going to learn a few keyboard shortcuts as well because we need to figure out how to convert a curved path to a corner point, and vice versa, and how to split direction lines. And I find that it's much more efficient to do this using shortcuts than to have to constantly select different tools. So I'll use Command + 1 to zoom in, and then we can scoot over to these complex paths. I'll tap the P key to select the Pen tool, and then I'm going to click one anchor point and then another. And then we'll just add an anchor point in the center. I'll hold down the Command key on Mac, Control Key on Windows, just to reposition this, and this is great. We've got a nice curve, but now I want to convert it into a corner point. So to do this, we could return to the Pen tools and select the Convert Point Tool, but there's a keyboard shortcut, and it's just holding down the Option key on Mac or the Alt key on Windows and then clicking. And that will convert a curved point to a corner point. Now, if I want to go the other way, I have a corner point, and I want a curved point, I can just hold down Option or Alt and drag out to the right. I can drag to the left, but then I'm going to get this loop. So I'll drag out to the right. All right, let's end that by holding down the Command key and just clicking. And now let's move to this speed bump. So here, I want to set down my first point and then my second point. And now I want a curved point, so I'm going to click and drag up, but I'm going to show my guides, which I can do by using Command and then semicolon. That'll just help me know where I'm going to drag to. So I'm going to click and drag up, and you'll notice that I'm only getting half of the direction line. And that's because when I clicked and clicked again down here, this was a corner point. So now I have told it by dragging that I want it to be a curve. So I've started the curve. Now I'm going to click and drag down. Now you can see we have both the direction lines, right, so I've got the direction line here that's controlling this portion of the curve and this direction line. But the problem is, is if I click, now, we're going to get a curve. So I'm going to undo that, and I need to get rid of this direction line. So the easiest way to do that, hold down the Option key on Mac, Alt key on Windows, and just click on the anchor point. Now I can click to the right and finish the path. All right, I'll hold down Command and just finish that and then scoot over. So now we have this heart shape. I'm going to click and drag to start the curve for the top of the heart, and just take a look at the direction lines for a minute. There's two of them, right, on either side of the anchor point, and that's going to be a little bit of a problem when we end this path. So just keep this in mind, and we're going to fix it. So then I can click and drag down. That's going to set that first heart. I'll click again and set down the point at the bottom, then click and drag. But when I click and close the path, we get this wave, not this nice arch. And if I hold down the Command key, and we click on this anchor point, we can see why. It's because I have the direction line going in this direction. I need this direction line to come up in this direction so that the curve goes up along here. So how can we change that? Well, just hold down the Option key on Mac or the Alt key on Windows and position your cursor on top of the direction point line, and then we can go ahead and move that. We're basically breaking the connection between the two so that we can move them freely. All right, I'm going to hide the guides by just using the Command + ; again. It's going to make it a little easier for me when I grab my Command key and just scoot this over to match that. All right, so it's good to know that you can always go to the Toolbar, and you can select one of the Selection tools, or you can choose the Convert Point tool. But as you become more familiar with paths, it's really great to know those two shortcuts, that the Command or the Control key will toggle the Path Selection or Direct Selection tool and that the Option or Alt key will temporarily give you the Convert Point tool. At this point, I'll convert the Work Path into Path number 4. Choose File, and then Save As. I'll append this with a 3 and save it as a layered Photoshop file into The Pen Tools folder.

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