Photoshop CC: The Missing Manual

Photoshop’s Drawing Modes

In the real world, the word drawing implies that you’re sketching lines and shapes by hand. But in Photoshop and in this book, drawing refers to creating objects using Photoshop’s vector tools: the Pen tool and the various shape tools. Drawing with these tools is more like drafting (think technical illustrations such as blueprints) because you’re creating precise outlines of shapes instead of the varying lines of a sketch or painting.

Note

Here’s a way to make sense of the difference between Photoshop’s painting tools and its vector drawing tools: If Van Gogh or Michelangelo had used Photoshop, they would have liked the Brush tool because of its similarity to real-world paintbrushes. However, artists like Matisse, Mondrian, and Picasso would have favored the vector drawing tools because their painting styles are more precise and angular and depend on creating smooth, clean geometric shapes and lines.

Photoshop has three different drawing modes, accessible in the Options bar (see Figure 14-2), that determine exactly what happens when you use the Pen and shape tools. Here’s what each mode does:

Figure 14-2. When you press P to grab the Pen tool, you see a drop-down menu for different drawing modes near the left end of the Options bar. The buttons to the right of the Make label let you tell Photoshop what you want to create out of the shape you’ve drawn: a selection ...