#pentools

Welcome to today’s Blog. Today Clipping World is going to talk about the weapon of graphic designers. It is the Photoshop Pen Tool. This blog will be in two parts because if we want to understand the pen tool and its usability, one or two blog isn’t enough. Hopefully, I can cover most of it.

In this article, we’ll discuss:

The basics of the Pen Tool in Photoshop

What is the Pen Tool in Photoshop?

What are some common uses for the Pen Tool?

Where is the Pen Tool in Photoshop?

Where is the Paths Panel in Photoshop?

Pen Tool settings overview

Let’s Dig into it more and see this magical tool.

What is the Pen Tool in Photoshop?

The pen tool is a feature of Photoshop. By Vangie Beal In graphics software, the pen tool is frequently used in the creation of smooth-edged selections, but is not a type of selection tool. Unlike the Brush Tool and Pencil Tools, which “draw” pixels onto your image, the Pen Tool always creates a vector path when used. These paths appear as either Work Paths or Shape Paths in the Paths Panel.

What are some common uses for the Pen Tool?

Since you can modify, store and reuse the paths created with the Pen Tool as often as you want, it can become your go-to tool when you need to cut out an image, to remove product image from its background, for example, select a portion of a product image to change the color. For more, you can also check the blog on “Common Uses of Clipping Paths in Photoshop“

Shape Paths created with the Pen Tool allow you to create custom shapes on your image that can be used to display certain parts of an image. In contrast to shapes created using the standard shape tools (such as the rectangle tool or ellipse tool), shapes created with the pen tool can be manipulated.

Where is the Pen Tool in Photoshop?

By default, it is in the lower half of the Toolbar section. If you click and hold on the Pen Tool in the Toolbar, you’ll see six separate Pen Tool options in both Photoshop CC 2018 and 2019 (if you’re using an older version of Photoshop, you may only see five Pen Tool options).

Where is the Paths Panel in Photoshop?

The pen tool and the path panel go hand in hand so that you can see paths when you start using the pen tool. Paths can be accessed in the Essentials (default) workspace by clicking the Paths tab in the Layers Panel

You can also access paths by clicking on the Windows drop-down menu and selecting paths if you do not see a path panel in your workspace.

Pen Tool settings overview

Pen Tool has a total of six setting options from which three is for creating paths and other is to modify existing paths. In Photoshop CC 2019, there are four different Pen Tools you can use to create a new path:

The standard Pen Tool

The Curvature Pen Tool

The Freeform Pen Tool

The Magnetic Pen Tool (only visible by adjusting the settings of the Freeform Pen Tool)

The other three are:

Add Anchor Point Tool

Delete Anchor Point Tool

Convert Point Tool

If you access either the standard Pen Tool, the Curvature Pen Tool or the Freeform Pen Tool, you can set your Pen Tool from the top of the application window to either Path or Shape from the options bar.

While using the Pen Tool in editing whenever you choose a path, it makes another Work Path that shows up in the Paths Panel and whenever you choose the shape, it makes another Shape Path that shows up in both the Paths Panel and the Layers Panel. You can also change a few different settings when choosing Shape, including stroke color, thickness and shape color. In our second part of this article, we will examine the specifics of creating a shape with the Pen Tool.