 |
|
|
Home | Products | Photoshop | Books
Drawing with Shapes in Photoshop Elements 4
Page 2 of 3
by Barbara Brubdage
...Continued from Page 1
The Custom Shape Tool
The
Shape Selection Tool
Continued on Page 3...
The Custom Shape Tool
The Custom Shape lets you draw a huge variety of different objects.
Its icon is the
little cartoon talk bubble shape in the Toolbox. Click it or
press U to activate the
Custom Shape tool. With this tool, you can draw a wealth of different
shapes, as
you can see from Figure 11-23.
Up
To Speed
|
Rasterizing Vector Shapes
|
|
Back in
Chapter 3, you read about how the majority of
your images (definitely your photos) are just a bunch
of
pixels to Elements. These images are known as raster
images. The shapes you draw with the Shape tools
work a little differently. They’re called vector
images.
A vector image is made up of a set of directions,
specifying what kind of geometric shapes should
be drawn. The
advantage of vector images is that you can size
them way
up or down without producing the kind of pixelation
you
see when you resize a raster image too much.
Your shape keeps its vector characteristics until
you simplify
the layer that it’s on. Simplifying, also
called
rasterizing,
just means that Elements turns your shape into
regular pixels. Once you simplify, you have the
same limitations
on resizing as you do for a regular photo. For
example, you can make your image smaller, but
you can’t make it larger than 100 percent
without losing quality.
Sooner or later, you may want to transform your
vector
image to a regular raster image so that you can
do
certain things to it, like adding filters or effects.
If you try to do something that requires simplifying
a layer, Elements generally asks you to do so, via
a pop-up dialog box. To rasterize your shape, just
click OK, or click the Simplify button in the Options
bar. Remember that once you’ve rasterized a
shape, if you try to resize, you won’t get
the nice, clean unpixilated results that you got
when it was a vector image. If you need to resize
a shape, it’s easiest to start over with a
new shape—if that’s feasible (which is
yet another good reason to use layers).
Also, it may puzzle you that, where at one time
you were able to change the color of an existing
shape by clicking the color box, now, all of a sudden,
the shape totally ignores what you do in the Options
bar. That’s because you simplified the shape
layer. Simplifying always affects the entire layer—everything
on it is simplified, or nothing is. Once your shape
is simplified, you have to make a selection and change
the color the way you would on any detail in a photo.
|
|
|
Once the Custom Shape
tool is active, if you look in the Options bar, you see a little
window labeled Shape with the arrow for a pull-down menu next to
it. Click
this arrow to bring up the Elements Shape Picker.
There are a variety of different shapes in the Default group
but if you click the
arrow at the upper-right corner of the window, you get a menu
giving you a great
many more choices. If you want to be able to scroll through all
of them, just
choose All Elements Shapes.
Tip - There’s
a copyright symbol available in the custom shapes if you
prefer not to use
text to
create one.
|
The Custom shape also has a few optional settings,
like the other Shape tools. They
are:
- Unconstrained. You control the proportions of your shape by the
way you drag.
- Defined Proportions. The shape always has the proportions
the designer gave it
when it was created.
- Defined Size. The shape is always the size it was originally
created to be—dragging
won’t make it bigger or smaller. It just plinks out at
a fixed size that you
can’t control, except by resizing after the fact.
- Fixed
Size. You enter the dimensions you want, in inches, pixels, or
centimeters.
- From Center. You start drawing in the center of the
object.
 |
Figure 11-23:
This is just a small part of the shape library you can choose
from in the Shape Picker. You can download more custom
shapes and add them to C:\Program files\Adobe Photoshop
Elements 4\Presets\Custom shapes. Look for the
file extension .csh when you want shapes that you can add
to your library. Downloaded shapes that you add show up
as drawing options when you click the More button on the
Shapes palette.
|
Back
The Shape Selection Tool
The arrow in the Options bar just to the left of the Rectangle
tool is the Shape
Selection tool. This is a special kind of Move tool (page 124)
that works only on
shapes that haven’t been simplified yet, as explained in
Figure 11-24.
It may seem unnecessary, but if you’re working
with shapes, it saves a lot of time
not to have to keep switching tools when you want to move one shape.
Click the Shape Selection tool and then move your shape. Your shape
doesn’t have
to be on the active layer. You can also use the Shape Selection
tool to combine
multiple shapes into one by clicking the Combine button.
The Shape Selection tool works just like the Move tool. You can
drag to move,
hold down Alt to copy (instead of moving) the original shape,
drag the handles to
resize the shape, and so on.
Workaround
Workshop
|
Drawing Outlines and Borders
|
If you’ve
played around at all with the Shape tool, you
may have noticed that you can’t draw shapes
that are just
outlines (i.e., that aren’t filled with color).
No matter what
you do, your shape is always a solid shape (except
for the
frame shapes).
Even if you
haven’t
ever touched the Shape tool, you may
be wondering how the heck to get a simple plain
colored
border around a photo.
The easiest way to create an outline is to
make a selection
using the Marquee tool or other selection tools
and then
select Edit  Stroke (Outline) Selection. The
Stroke dialog
box pops up and lets you enter the width of the
line
in pixels and choose a color.
You’ll also see choices for Location,
which tell Elements where you want the line—around
the inside edge of the selection, centered on
the edge of the selection, or around the outside.
If you’re bordering an entire photo, don’t
choose Outside, or the border won’t show
because it’s off the edge of your image.
You can choose a blend mode (page 290) if you
like and set the opacity. Using a mode can give
you a more subtle edge than a normal stroke does.
The Transparency setting just ensures that any
transparent areas in your layer stay transparent.
When you’re finished adjusting the settings
in the Stroke dialog box, click OK, turn off
your Marquee, and you’ve got yourself an
outlined shape. |
|
|
 |
Figure 11-24:
The Shape Selection tool gives you the same kind of bounding
box as the Move tool, and it works the
same way, but only on shapes that haven’t
been
simplified yet. You can apply transformations like skewing
and rotating, too,
when the Shape Selection tool is active. Once you’ve
simplified a shape layer,
you need the regular Move tool to move it around. You can always
use the
Move tool, even on shapes where you can use the Shape Selection
tool. But the
Shape Selection tool works only on shapes that haven’t
been simplified yet.
|
Back
Continued on Page 3...
Copyright © 2006 O'Reilly Media, Inc. All Rights
Reserved.
|
|
