The drawing tools enable you to create regular shapes in an image such as a rectangle, rounded rectangle, ellipse, polygon, line, or custom shape. When you draw a shape, Photoshop by default places the shape on its own layer in the image, so refer to Chapter 8 if you have a question about working with layers .
Note | The Pen tool is for creating paths, not drawing lines. Chapter 10, "Using Paths," explains how to work with paths. |
As you might expect, you use the Line tool to draw lines. The following steps explain how to use this tool:
Press and hold the mouse button over the Rectangle tool in the toolbox. A list of tools will appear.
Click on the Line tool . The Line tool will become the active tool.
Choose the desired settings in the options bar. Your selections will become the active settings for the tool.
Tip | Click on the Fill Pixels button on the options bar if you want to place the drawing on the background layer rather than on a new layer in your image. Otherwise, leave the Shape Layers button selected. If you instead click on the Paths button, Photoshop will create a path and not a line. (You can find these buttons together in a group near the left end of the options bar.) Chapter 10 explains what paths are and how to use them. |
Select the foreground color using the method of your choice. The color you select will become active for the Line tool.
Drag in the work area. As you drag, your line will appear.
As you may have noticed from the preceding set of steps, the Shape tools are grouped with the Line tool on the Photoshop toolbox. The following set of steps demonstrates how to use one of the Shape tools. (They all basically work in the same way.)
Press and hold the mouse button over the Rectangle tool in the toolbox. A list of tools will appear.
Click on the desired Shape tool in the submenu. The selected tool becomes the active tool.
Choose the desired settings in the options bar. Your selections will become the active settings for the tool.
Note | If you choose the Custom Shape tool, be sure to use the Shape drop-down list on the options bar to specify which kind of shape to draw. Again, leave the Shape Layers button selected unless you want to add the shape to the current layer (whether it's the background layer or another layer). |
Select the foreground color using the method of your choice. The color you select will become active for the tool and will become the fill color for the drawn object.
Drag in the work area. As you drag, your shape will appear.