Adobe® InDesign® CS5 Bible

Chapter 16. Drawing Free-form Shapes and Curved Paths

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Understanding path basics

• Drawing zigzag and wavy lines

• Drawing closed shapes

• Drawing free-form shapes

• Working with anchor points

• Modifying segments

• Manipulating open paths

• Manipulating closed paths

• Joining paths and creating compound paths

• Applying corner options to paths

InDesign's basic drawing tools let you create basic shapes, such as straight lines, rectangles and squares, circles and ellipses, and equilateral polygons.

But what about when you need to create shapes that aren't so basic, such as amoeba or a cursive version of your first name, perhaps? That's where InDesign's Pen tool comes in. You can use the Pen tool to create any kind of line or closed shape, and you can use anything you create with the Pen tool as an independent graphic element or as a frame for text or a picture.

If you've ever used an illustration program such as Illustrator or CorelDraw, or a page-layout program such as PageMaker or QuarkXPress, you may already be familiar with Bézier drawing tools. (Bézier tools are named after Pierre Bézier, a French engineer and mathematician, who developed a method of representing curved shapes on a computer in the 1970s.)

Tip

If you aren't familiar with Bézier tools, you should know in advance that getting the hang of using them takes a little time and patience.

Even if you're a virtuoso when drawing with a piece of charcoal or a B6 pencil, you need to practice with the Pen tool for a while before your drawing ...