Drawing Free-Form Shapes

A closed path is an uninterrupted enclosure with no endpoints. When you apply a stroke to a closed path , there's no beginning or end. Generally, you'll create closed paths when you want to place text or pictures in free-form frames . Although you can place text or a picture in an open path, the result can look more than a little strange, especially if you add a stroke to the path. Then again, you can achieve some strange effects by using open paths as frames. If strange is your goal, go for it.

Tip ‚

For an easy way to draw free-form shapes, use the Pencil tool. It simply traces the movement of your mouse (or pen tablet) as you move it, much like a pencil works on paper. Although not as exact as the Pen tool, the Pencil tool does create B ƒ zier curves that you can later edit. Do note that the Pencil tool is not meant for creating straight lines ‚ unless you can draw perfectly straight lines by hand, that it.

When it comes to creating closed paths with the Pen tool, the process is exactly the same as for creating open paths, as explained earlier in this chapter, with one difference at the end: If you click on the first endpoint you created, you create a closed path:

To create a straight segment between the endpoint and the last anchor point you created, click and release the mouse button.
To create a curved segment, click and drag the mouse in the direction of the last anchor point you created, and then release the mouse button.

Just like an open path, a closed path can contain straight and/or curved segments and smooth and/or corner points. All the techniques explained earlier in this chapter for drawing lines with curved and straight segments and smooth and corner points apply when you're drawing closed paths. Figure 26-16 shows several closed paths used as graphic shapes, text frames, and graphics frames.

Figure 26-16: Closed paths of various shapes.

Cross-Reference ‚

If you draw a path and it turns out to be a little (or a lot, for that matter) different than you intended, don't worry. You can always modify it by moving, adding, deleting, and converting anchor points and by adjusting direction lines. You can also use the transformation tools or the Transform pane to rotate, scale, shear, mirror, and change the position of the path.

Cross-Reference ‚

See Chapter 27 for information about modifying lines and shapes. See Chapters 11 and 24 for more information about using InDesign's transformation features.