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hukari » Wed Feb 20, 2008 10:51 am
Okay, let me first give you a few quotes that have helped me along the way:
For the moment, try to imagine a springy wire. A guitar string will do. Unlike a piece of rope, a guitar string’s material has a “memory”; it is made in such a way that it “remembers” what it is supposed to be. In the case of a guitar string, that is a straight line. That doesn’t mean it can’t be deformed, but it wants to be a straight line.
Imagine now that we have a board with two nails hammered in, and we force the springy wire or guitar string between those nails. It will form a smooth arc, right? The outward tension the string creates (wanting to be a straight line) will create a smooth curve. If we feed more string in, the curve expands in size but stays smooth. Without the nails, the string forms a straight line. The somewhat odd graphic at right is my attempt at clarifying this concept visually!
This is the best bezier curve analogy I can come up with. The Pen Tool creates points (the “nails” in the analogy) which constrain and define the segments, which can be either smooth curves or straight sections.
thegoldenmean.comImagine your pen tool is a car. The edge of the object you are drawing is a road that you are driving down. Now every time you come to a curve, you have to hold the button down and steer towards that curve. That will create a pretty close approximation for what you want to do. Remember that if the turn is abrupt, you just click and let go so that it is a sharp angle.
planetphotoshop.comOne of the nice things you'll learn rather quickly about the Pen Tool is that it is extremely forgiving.
There's no reason at all to worry about getting things right the first time when drawing paths with it because we can go back and fix things up easily when we're done! Did you place an anchor point in the wrong spot? No problem! Just move it where you need it! We'll see how to do that in a moment. Did you drag out a direction handle in the wrong direction? Not a problem. Grab the handle and rotate it into the direction you need. Again, we'll see how to do that. Is one of your direction handles too long or too short? No problem at all. Just click on it and then drag it longer or shorter as needed (yep, we're going to see how to do that, too). Paths are fully editable at all times, so there's absolutely no reason to worry about making a mistake or getting it right the first time. Doesn't that make you feel a little better already?
photoshopessentials.comThen I would recommend you look at this long, but very good tutorial about the pen tool:
http://www.photoshopessentials.com/basi ... elections/And since you have more experience with it than the last time you watched, try watching Bert Monroy's video about the pen tool again. He goes fast, but he has a lot of good things to say.
http://revision3.com/pixelperfect/pentool/This is also a good resource, though it is for Illustrator:
http://www.oit.umass.edu/workshops/tuto ... g/ai_2.pdfYou may also want to turn the rubber band option on (down arrow next to the blobby shape at the top). I don't find it terribly helpful, but you might.