Pen Tool Photoshop Tutorials 3: Pen Tool Basics Creating, Selecting & Activating Paths

Photoshop Tutorial for Beginners

Starting out with the Pen Tool and creating your first Path.

Video Tutorial Outline

Select the Pen Tool: Press p
Creating a new Path Option 1: Select New Path from the Paths Panel fly out menu or press the new path button
Creating a new Path Option 2: If you start clicking a Pen Tool Work Path will automatically be created. It’s a good idea to double click on the Work Path straight away to save it as a Path (Work Paths can easily be overridden)
Selecting a Path: Click on a Path in the Paths Palette then CTRL/⌘ + Click near the Path/Anchor, hold down the mouse button and drag over the Path
Activating a Path: Once the Path is selected, with the Pen Tool, Mouse Click directly on top of an Anchor at the end of a line
Deactivating a Path: CTRL/⌘ + Click anywhere in the image area
Drawing a straight line: Click and Hold down Shift to constrain the lines to 45-degree angles
Closing a Path: Mouse over the end Anchor until a small circle appears to the bottom right of the cursor and click

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Welcome to PEN TOOL Photoshop. In this tutorial we’ll cover creating, selecting and activating paths. So

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you always want to start by pressing P. This will make sure you’re actually on the Pen Tool. Next thing you

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need to do is create a new path. So if you go across to paths palette click on the fly out menu,

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then you can choose ‘new path’. This will give you the option to label your paths. In most cases you just

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leave it as path 1, but if you’re working with a few people in a team, or you’re going to have a whole

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lot of paths, it’s worth labeling these paths, because you might revisit the job in six months and want to

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know what the path relates to. But in most cases you can just leave it as path 1, or 2, 3, 4. So this is a

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path there and then when I click, you can see that’s this path.

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The second way of doing it is to just click on this button down here next to the trash can. Same thing

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again, it starts to add the path to that path 1. Now there are probably the best habits in getting to if

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you want to start off, or just click on that and just start pathing. That’s probably the best way of doing it.

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Realistically most people tend to just click somewhere on the image, and as you hold down the shift key,

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it will constrain those lines. So you can see this line here wasn’t quite straight. Hold down the shift key

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and just click.

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At the moment I just want this to be a line. You can see this rubber band is still coming off the end. So if

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you hit ‘escape’ that will cancel that so the rubber band is not coming off the end anymore. So click on that

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point again. You can see its rubber band. The other way of escaping out of that is to hold down the

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command key and then click on the background. That will just end the path. This path is not actually

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closed there. Check and see here it’s still a working path. So if I wanted to cut out this next shape, if I

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clicked off that, then I started to cut out the next shape, you can see it’s removed the first shape. You see

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it’s deleted the first shape that I had. So this is a case where I’d have to go back. So I click the first shape

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there, double click, save it as path 1. And if I click off it and I click here, you can see it’s created a new

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work path and path 1 has been saved. So if I close the path, you can see when I hover over that first

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square it’s put a little circle, and when I click that path is closed. Double click on the working

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path, save it as path 2. With the Pen Tool you can select a path and then activate a path. So selecting is a

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matter of clicking on the path name in the paths palette, command and then clicking and dragging over

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the path, and that will select the whole path. To activate it you click on one of the points and now it’s

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activated. You can see the rubber band is connected. So that’s now activated.

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So it’s an important distinction between clicking on a path and activating a path, selecting and activating.

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So this is now selecting path 2. Command, click and drag over it, drag and hover over command at this

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point and drag. And I’ll go into more detail with moving these anchors and lines in the next tutorial, but

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for now just feel comfortable with selecting paths, command clicking over them to activate them, and

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holding down the shift key, constrain them. And just making your working path serving as a path. It’s all

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in steps and you get these parts all down, all the harder stuff later on becomes a lot easier.

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So practice this even though it’s very basic, beginner level. It will step you right through to the more

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advanced stuff, and you will build upon these basic skills to then become more fluent later on.

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So that was creating, selecting and activating paths and I’ll see you in the next tutorial.