Website Design Tips - Hypergurl

Photoshop tutorial showing some tricks to help you better understand and master the pen tool.

The pen tool is one area of frustration for those just starting out in Adobe Photoshop. What makes it frustrating initially for most users, is that you can only create a 90 degree curve at any one time.

However, once you grasp the basics of using the pen tool, it isn't as hard as it first seems to draw a full circle.

Handy Tip: When following this tutorial you need to set your pen tool to "Paths" option and not "Shape Layers" along the top toolbar. If shape layers is selected, then your pen tool will fill in whatever shape you draw with a color instead of drawing the outline of a shape.

Each time you click your canvas with the pen tool, you create what is refered to as an anchor point. To make the first anchor point, simply click your canvas once. Then when adding the second (and every one there after) anchor point, click and drag it to make a curve.

If you would like to visually see how easy it is to use Photoshop pen tool, press the go arrow on the video below:

At first it takes a little practise, but after a while you'll soon grasp the concept and find it a very useful tool.