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Drawing lines - vector style


C

chrish

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Hi,

I've learnt so much over the last few months and I have done designs I never thought I could do and surprised myself so many times, also largely due to the support of this community! But one really simple thing thing still puzzles me, and although I always find a way to work around it, I'm sure there must be an easier way....maybe I'm just saturating here and can't see the tree for the woods, but:

How do I draw a simple curved line with no fill, without having to layer shapes or think of any other workarounds. What I mean is, if I use the pen tool, no fill and with stroke, it will always close the shape, while vector tools such as Illustrator just draw the line, an example is attached.

In the ecample I used the eraser on a flattened image to illustrate the Illustrator way of doing things. I can't believe Phototshop doesn't allow you to draw curver lines other than the brush or pencil which obviously always come out shakey and imprecise (in my case anyways ;) )

Please tell me I'm stupid and there's an easy way :)

Chris
 
Draw your shape, then take the direct selection tool.(left of the text tool).
then select your shape, select points you want to delete and hit Del.
Selection what is left allows you to use the B?zier handles.
Afterwards you can easily add popints with the pen tool and manipulate them.
 
Thanks Erik,

either I didn't understand you corrcetly or you didn;t understand my query correctly. I only have to points, so if I select one, my shape disappears.

I just want to drae a curve from one point to another, just the stroke, not the fill. But the curve always automatically connects starting ent point to start point. So I end up with a circular shape, as shown abovem and not a line.

Is this any clearer? :)

Chris
 
chrish... what you want to do is make a "path" with the pen tool and then "stroke" it. ;)

1. Select your pen tool.
2. Select paths (the 2nd of 3 boxes beside the pen tool on your option toolbar)
3. Draw your path
4. Now, open up the Paths pallette
5. Select "stroke"

In this example, I've stroked the path with a pencil and then a brush. Select your brush size and colour prior to choosing the "stroke" option.
 
Haleluja! I knew there had to be a way! Thanks, that's exactly what I meant...and that also means: No more need for the awkward Illustrator!

It is amazing tho, how well PS manages to hide some of the most simple features, lol :)

I guess that comes with a program which allows you to do....anything, everything and more than you ever thought possible.

Chris
 
:D Great news chrish!
 
Illustrator awkward? Never--Illustrator and Photoshop complement each other nicely.
 
They do, I actually used Illustrator before ever opening Photoshop for the first time, and I was very happy with it. But now I find that anything I can do in Photoshop and I don't have to open Illustrator is great, because I feel more comfortable with the PS tools. I wasn't bashing Illustrator at all, but the less I need anything but PS, the happier I am...and Illustrator eats up all my memory and keeps crashing my PC, if I don;t have to open it up...even better :)

Chris
 
Chrish, I can understand it when you only use Photoshop when you just use the standard vector tools, but....

Freehand MX, Illustrator 10, Xara X and Deneba Canvas 8 are just a few programs that show us what dedicated vector programs are capable of.
Warping, envelope, liquify, blending and transparency functions are just a few examples why these programs have a lot of interest and will have for quite some while.

It's silly to think that Photoshop's vector tools come even close to any of these programs :D
 
I agree :) I used XaraX for all my design work before I dared touch Photoshop, same with Illustrator. I always thought Photoshop was not accessible enough and just worked with vector tools, XaraX is awesome, so easy to use and quality output.

However anything I can to in Photoshop I'd like to do in it. And the more I learn about it the less I feel the need for any of the others. But of course, vector tools offer some possibilities PS simply doesn't. For example I'm doing a range of illustrations, pop art like, of faces. I use Illustrator to do that... :)

Chris
 
Agreed... there's definitely a "place" for both apps!!! Personally, I'd "die" to be without Illustrator, but IF there are things that I can easily accomplish in PS (without having to create and import from Illustrator), saving me that precious commodity called "time", I'm a happy camper! :D
 
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