Photoshop Pen tool explained in depth |Novado

Learn how to use pen-tool in Photoshop and master the techniques of using it, hours of time spent to make this tutorial simple and easer to understand even for beginners. Illustratred with images and explained each part of Pen tool. So lets start learning.

PenTool: Many Photoshop Beginners think that that using Pen tool in Photoshop is really a hard task and even they don't want to use pen-tool to make selections because it is too frustrating to make a perfect corner points(curved shapes...). So through this tutorial i hope you may benefit and learn some techniques using it (Pen tool).

Basics of Pen-tool
Create a new document and select pen tool ie available just above the 'Text tool' or hit 'P' to activate it.

When you activate the Pen-tool, you will see a small dockbar just below the Menubar with a list of other tools available in Pen-tool, as you can see in the figure below.

Now select the 'Paths'

Just click and add points to create a simple shape and when you see a small circle highlighting at the right corner of Pen-tool (ie to join the endpoints).

Select 'Direct Selection Tool' (Keyboard shortcut 'A' ) to activate the tool. You can select and move individual points.

If you again switch to pen tool (p) you can subtract or add a point.

Now to draw curved shapes like ellipse, point click to add a point and by still holding the mouse drag few inches left or right to create small nodes to the points to create the shape. see the figure below.

For Practicing purpose download this image Practice

Lets move on to advanced techniques of using Pen-tool

Making Selections

Using pen tool create points around the image.

After creating the points, right click with mouse inside area and click make selection.

Now feather the selection, 1 or 2px is enough for a good quality photo.

Now you can see a selection around the image hit Ctrl+J on keyboard to make a copy of image to a new layer (or you use edit menu to copy and paste).

The final picture is shown below.

Tips

When you are using Pen-tool, use control (ctrl) or command key on mac to move the anchor points without switching to 'Direct selection tool'
You can add small node to anchor points, holding (Alt key) on keyboad while draging with mouse.