Visibility of paths

[longtalker]

Hello everyone,

I'm using the Pen Tool to draw several paths; I need to draw each path with reference to the other, previously drawn, paths. This is where I encountered a problem with Photoshop CS3: whenever I create a new path, the old ones become invisible, and I can only see one path at a time - the one that's selected in the Paths panel.

Is there any way to control the visibility of the different existing paths (as you can, for example, with layers) and to make several (unstroked) paths be visible simultaneously?

Anticipated thanks for any help!

 

[X-force]

hat's because you put all paths on different layers (see paths palette).
Put them on one and the same layer and you won't have that problem.

 

[longtalker]

No, I actually haven't even defined any layers, there's just the Background.

 

[X-force]

I'm not talking about regular layers of course, go to the paths palette, if you see all your paths on one "layer", then you're fine, but I'll bet you see more than one "layer".

(technically it's not a layer, but it should make you easier to understand what I mean with the path palette in front of you)

 

[longtalker]

Right - I see what you mean, and you're right, it is what I have been doing, however the reason for that is that I wanted to control each curve independently of the other, as with regular layers. So I thought if I put them each on its own "path layer", this will be easier, but as mentioned, doing that makes it apparently impossible to view all of them simultaneously.

 

[X-force]

but as mentioned, doing that makes it apparently impossible to view all of them simultaneously.

That doesn't mean that there are no tricks to solve that issue.

You could for example turn the paths into shapes by clicking on the adj. layer button in the layers palette and selecting "solid color" (the path has to be active to do this).

If that means that you can't see the paths underneath, then you set the "fill" of the layer (top of layers palette) to zero and add a layer style, a stroke of 1 pixel.

You can also do all on one layer and later on copy parts to a new layer.

Of course, none of it is a super solution and also requires that you have to remove all that junk again when you're done, but then I'm going to be honest with you; Photoshop is simply not well suited for this, you need a vector editor like Illustrator instead and all your issues are solved and it offers also additional benefits.

 

[longtalker]

I see - thanks a lot for your response!