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Photoshop CC: The Missing Manual, 2nd Edition
book

Photoshop CC: The Missing Manual, 2nd Edition

by Lesa Snider
August 2014
Beginner content levelBeginner
989 pages
34h 23m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Photoshop CC: The Missing Manual, 2nd Edition

Editing Paths

All this talk about setting points, dragging handles, and creating shapes can sound a bit intimidating. But it’s important to remember that the Pen and shape tools are very forgiving—if you don’t get the path right the first time, you can always edit it by adding, deleting, and repositioning its points and dragging their control handles (yes, this applies to shapes drawn on shape layers, too). The trick lies in knowing which tool to use to make the changes you want. This section explains all your options.

Adding, Deleting, and Converting Points

At first, you may have a wee bit of trouble drawing paths—especially with the Pen tool—that look exactly like you want (surprise!). But don’t stress; just add more points, move them around, and adjust the curves until you get the shape you’re aiming for. You’ll need fewer and fewer points as you get more comfortable using the vector drawing tools. And if you’ve had yourself a point party, you can delete the extra ones.

Adding and deleting points is really easy since the Pen tool figures out what you want to do depending upon what your cursor is pointed at. For example:

  • To add a point, grab the Add Anchor Point tool (shown on Drawing Paths with the Pen Tool) from the pen toolset (it looks like the Pen tool’s icon with a + next to it). When you see a tiny + appear next to the cursor, you can click an existing path to create a new point. You can also just grab the Pen tool, point your cursor at an existing path (but avoid pointing ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781491905593Supplemental ContentErrata Page