BMG Tutorial

Learning the Basics of the Pen Tool (Page two)

Learn how to use the Pen Tool (page two)

6. There are two ways we can fill this image out to have a real visual of the shape we’ve created. The first way, is we reconnect to our first anchor point. This is simply done by clicking on our original point.

pen tool step six

7. You notice that when you connect back to your original anchor point, you get a straight line. We’ll fix this by right clicking on our straight line and selecting “add anchor point”. This will now give us the ability to move the straight line to the rest of the line.

pen tool anchor point

8. Add as many points that you need in order to make both lines smooth as possible. Once you’ve done that, right click in the middle of your S-Curve

pen tool step 8

9. To fill in what you’ve done, right click inside your image, and hit “Make Selection”. Once you do that, a box will come up asking you if you would like to “Feather Radius”. I like to feather it at around 0.2 pixels. Once you’ve done that, hit “OK” then fill your selection in with whatever color you want!

You’ve now made a (very simple) shape with your pen tool! Yay!

Ok, so like I said, that’s only the first way to get your image. The second way is better for creating more abstract designs, while the way we just learned is better for creating shapes, and vectors.

Go back into your history to get to this step:
(or just re-create the line)

pen tool S

Before we do anything else, make sure that in your brush tool, you have a nice, soft, small brush set.

1. On your line, right click and hit “Stroke Path”

pen tool stroke path

When you select “Stroke Path” you’ll have a window pop up. “Simulate Pressure” means that if your brush is pressure sensitive, it will simulate it, such as fading out near the edges of your line. Hit “OK” when you get this pop-up.

pen tool simulate pressure

Ta-Da! You’re done! Just kidding! You still have the pen tool line in the way. To get rid of this, we’re simly going to right click, and hit “Make Selection”. Don’t worry about feathering it. Hit “OK” then deselect your selection.

finished pen tool

Now You're done!

This is just the very basics of the pen tool. I hope you’ve learned something today, and I encourage you to try new things with the pen tool, such as render images. (taking images out of their background) Infact- BlindMansGFX has a tutorial over this! :)

I hope to go over a more advanced pen tool tutorial in the future. Until then, thanks for reading! BlindMansGFX.net ftw!