Montage techniques

Drawing paths with the pen tool

Unless you have had previous experience working with a vector-based drawing program like Freehand or Adobe Illustrator, the concept of drawing with paths will be unfamiliar. It is difficult at first to get the hang of it, but I promise you it is well worth mastering the art of drawing with the pen tool. Hard as it may seem at first, it is like riding a bike, and once learned, never forgotten. Paths are useful in several ways: either applying a stroke with one of the paint tools, for saving as a clipping path, or defining a complex selection shape, which can be converted to a selection or applied as a vector mask to mask a layer.

Because it is difficult to master the art of drawing with the pen tool, many people are inclined to give up on paths and persevere with other mask methods. Figure 11.6 shows an example of a photograph where it would be hard to define a smooth edge boundary other than by drawing a path outline. Historically, Photoshop began as a program that was used by its customers to edit relatively small sized image files. The Apple computers in those days could only be expanded in a limited fashion and always at great cost. Consequently, Photoshop was in practice a veritable tortoise compared with the high-end systems then used to retouch large digital files. The Photoshop selection tools like the lasso and magic wand were suited to operating efficiently with small sized files, which was all the program was likely to deal with back then. In a typical design studio, most of the images handled were less than 10 MB in size. Today Photoshop is able to handle files ten times that size with ease on a top of the range desktop computer. The pen tool is the professional’s selection tool, so if you are planning to work on large sized files, you will mostly find it quicker to draw a path and convert this to a selection rather than relying on the selection and paint tools alone. The magic wand may do a grand job on tutorial sized images, but is not a method that translates well to working on bigger files. The magnetic tools fall half way between. They are cleverly designed to automate the selection process, but there is usually no alternative available but to manually define the outline with a path.

Guidelines for drawing pen paths

We shall start with the task of following the simple contours illustrated in Figure

11.7. You will find a copy of this image in a layered Photoshop format on the CDROM. This Photoshop file contains saved path outlines of each of the shapes. The background layer contains the basic image and above it there is another layer of the same image but with the pen path outlines and all the points and handles showing. Make this layer visible and fade the opacity if necessary so that you can follow the handle positions when trying to match drawing the path yourself. Start at kindergar

Adobe Photoshop 7.0 for Photographers

ten level with the letter ‘d’. If you mastered drawing with the polygon lasso tool, you will have no problem doing this. Click on the corner points one after another until you reach the point where you started to draw the path. As you approach this point with the cursor you will notice a small circle appear next to the cursor which indicates you are now able to click (or drag) to close the path. Actually this is better than drawing with the polygon lasso, because you can now zoom in if required and precisely reposition each and every point. As before, hold down the Command/Ctrl key to switch to the pointer and drag any point to realign it precisely. After closing the path, hit Command/Ctrl-Enter (not Enter on its own any more) to convert the path to a selection.

If you now try to follow the ‘h’, this will allow you to concentrate on the art of drawing curved segments. Observe that the beginning of any curved segment starts by dragging the handle outward in the direction of the intended curve. To understand the reasoning behind this, imagine you are trying to define a circle by drawing a square perimeter. To continue a curved segment, click and hold the mouse down while you drag to complete the shape of the end of the last curve segment and predict the initial curve angle of the next segment. This assumes the next curve will be a smooth continuation of the last. Whenever there is a sharp change in direction you need to make a corner point. Convert the curved segment by holding down the Option/Alt key and clicking. Click to place another point. This will create another straight segment as before in the ‘d’ example.

Hold down the Command/Ctrl key to temporarily access the direct selection tool which can be used to reposition points. When you click a point or segment with this tool, the handles are displayed. Adjust these to refine the curve shape. The ‘v’ shape will help you further practice making curved segments and corner points. A corner point should be placed whenever you intend the next segment to break with the angle of the previous segment. In the niches of the ‘v’ symbol, hold down the Option/Alt key and drag to define the predictor handle for the next curve shape.