From the course: Photoshop 2024 Essential Training

Pen skills in practice - Photoshop Tutorial

From the course: Photoshop 2024 Essential Training

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Pen skills in practice

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- [Instructor] So now that we know how to make straight paths and curve paths and even change the direction of a path, let's go ahead and put it all to use. We're going to create the shape of a duck, and we're going to use all of these guides to help us to create our path. I'll tap the P key to select the pen tool, and I'll start at the front of the duck's head. I'm going to click on the anchor point and then just drag up in order to start the curve at the top of the duck's head. Then I'll click and drag down in order to continue the curve, and I'll click and drag again to continue the curve, the back of the head. Now, this next curve is very tight on one side, but then it's going to be a very gentle curve on the other side. So I'm going to click and drag, but I'm not looking at where my cursor is right now. I'm looking at the direction line on the other side, so in the back. So when I released my cursor, I was actually looking here, not here, because this was the curve I was drawing, and that was the curve that was important. So now I know that I can't get this curve the way I want it with the direction line where it is. So I'm going to use Command-Z or Ctrl-Z to undo that, and I'm going to hold down option or alt on Mac, and that's going to enable me to select the direction point and drag that out further so that I get a gentler curve. Then we can click and drag down. Again, I'm not watching where my cursor is. I'm watching the template on the other side and watching the curve that's being created by the path. All right, so now I know I need to break this direction line. So I'm going to hold down the option key again and click on the direction point, and then just drag that in the other direction. All right, let's click and drag up. And then if I need to refine this curve, I can hold down the option key and refine that. Click and drag down. Then this is going to be a click and a long drag along the base. You can hold down the shift key if you want to keep that to a horizontal line. Then it's just a click with a short drag here. Then we want to come up the front, so it's a click and drag, and here we're going to need to change direction again. So I'll click on the anchor point and start dragging, again, watching the curve that I'm creating or watching the path. Then I'll hold down the option key and then break that direction line by clicking on the direction point. And then we'll click and drag out again. And then we'll click to create the beak, and then we'll position the cursor over the starting point and we will have our path of the duck. Now I want to save this path. So in the paths panel, I'm going to double click on the work path and we'll call this duck. And then in order to create a shape layer, I'll click on the shape icon. Then I'll target the background just to hide the path for the shape, and we can hide the background layer as well. And there you have it, with a little bit of practice, you'll be drawing great paths in no time.

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