Photoshop CC: The Missing Manual

Saving Paths

After all your hard work creating a path, it’s a good idea to save it so you can edit it (as explained later in this chapter) and use it again later. Or you might want to use the path to make a vector mask, as explained on Making Selections and Masks with Paths. Since paths are vector-based, they don’t take up much memory and won’t increase a file’s size much at all, so feel free to save as many of ’em as you want.

As you’re drawing a path, Photoshop stores it in the Paths panel as a temporary work path (see Figure 14-10) and displays it in your document as a thin gray line. If you want to hide the gray line—so it’s not a visual distraction—just press Return (Enter on a PC). To create multiple paths in a single document, click the “Create new path” icon at the bottom of the Paths panel (otherwise you have to save each path before starting on the next one to keep Photoshop from adding the subsequent path to the previous one). To work with your paths, open the Paths panel by choosing Window→Paths (see Figure 14-10).

Note

Miraculously, Photoshop keeps an unsaved work path in your document even if you close the file and don’t open it for a year. The catch is you can have only one unsaved work path in a document at a time. If you want to add to that work path, activate it in the Paths panel and start drawing. Don’t forget to activate the path in your document, too, because if you start drawing without activating the work path first, the original path goes the way of the dodo ...