PIXEL PERFECT CUTOUTS: PEN TOOL IN PHOTOSHOP TUTORIAL

 
 Credit by : photoshopCAFE
Pixel Perfect Cut-outs - Pen Tool in Photoshop TutorialHey CAFE crew, itís Colin Smith here from PhotoshopCAFE.  And today I'm going to show you how to use the Pen Tool in Photoshop. Now, to really understand the basics, I've got some stuff on PhotoshopCAFE where I show you some different exercises and how the different tools work.  So you can get much more in-depth instruction thereby checking that out.  So what I'm going to do in this video is I 'm going to show you the basics of how the Pen Tool works, and then, we're going to jump into a project and we're going to create a flying car.  It's going to be a lot of fun. Now, the advantage in using the Pen Tool is you can create tech-sharp edges in your selections that no other tool can, and that's because it uses vectors.  Now, these vectors are based on Bezier curves, named after their inventor Frank Curves.  I'm just kidding.  Got you, didn'tI? No, it's actually Pierre Bezier from France invented Bezier curves and those are the same ones used in Illustrator and other programs. So what we're going to do is we're going to jump in right now.  We're going to get the hang of using this Pen Tool.  So the reason we'd use a pen rather than the other selection tools is it's really great for hard surface or hard edges because what it does is it uses a vector to create an extremely precise edge.  So another thing I've done here is you 'll notice I've made my cursor a little bit bigger because I've had people ask me about that said that it was a little hard to see, so, hopefully, this will help.  So let's look at the curve.  This is the anatomy of a curve and I've actually taken this from a tutorialI have at PhotoshopCAFE. com and I'll add a link to that. But overall, what we're going to do is we're going to do is we're going to grab the PenTool.  That's going to be the P key, and how it works is like this.  If we click and d rag,it creates a point, and these little handles actually determine the direction.  So whatI've done is I've created a first point and by dragging up this way, I'm saying this is the direction that I want this curve to begin, just like that.  And so, now, it doesn't do anything, but when I create a second point, what it's going to do is it's going to create a curve. , Now this is like just click and hold right now.  You can see a curve is being created and as I drag the opposite direction, notice that it will, actually, set in that direction. If I choose to go the other direction, we'll get more of an S-curve. Notice how we can change the angle of it and we can change how much of that curve by making that line longer and also the direction of it create more of a reverse S right now.  So we're just going to click and drag, and notice that we can do that.  So let me just hit thisCtrl Z so we can undo the last point.  And what if we wanted to create this more of anM? So we actually want to change direction.  Well, there's a little tool here inside thePen Tool.  Notice there's the Pen, and then we've got the Plus and the Minus Anchor Poi nts,and then we've got the Convert Point Tool. So the Convert Point is that little arrow kind of looking thing.  So rather than use that tool, I love keyboard shortcuts, you know, if we hold down the Option or the Alt key that will actually create that.  So if I click there, and this time I drag up the opposite direction, notice that, that before, it was that way.  Now, I'm dragging up, still holding down the Alt key, and I release it, and now I create my next point, notice what it did is it changed the direction.  The other thing we can do is we can move that point around.  If I hit the space bar while I'm moving it, I can actually move that around.  So there we go; we added that additional point. All right, so, now, we can actually just go here.  We can add another point just by clicking. And if we want to close this path, what we'll do is-- See that little circle? We can click on that circle, and then, we close the path.  And, you know, we basically created a little rough love heart here.  So let's have a look at selecting it.  So, right now, we still got the Pen Tool, which means that we can draw.  If I hold down the Ctrl key and that will be Command on Windows, I can use this as a selection.  Notice I clicked away.  If I click on the path, it will select the path.  You can see it in the Paths panel there, but notice how these points now are hollow.  That means they're unselected. So to select a point, we just click on it, and now that it becomes filled, which means that we can adjust it by moving these points, see that? So, at any point, you can change this and you can change it later.  Now, the other thing is if we select this point h ere,now, we can change this one, see that? But notice how both sides work together.  If we want one side to work, still holding down that Ctrl key, or the Command key there, because that makes this a selection tool, if I also hold down the Alt or the Option key, it will split that, and now we can move one side of that curve by itself; same thing down here. And once it's in that mode, I don't have to hit the Ctrl or that key anymore, notice because it's already in split mode right now.  So if I hit the Alt and I click, now, what it will do is it will put them back so that they're working together now.  See that? All ri ght,so we can select more than one path at a time.  If we want, if I click and drag over th ere,holding down Ctrl.  And notice that? So we can change that shape by moving more than one point. Now, the reason we want to use a Path for making a selection is because the Pen Tool can create a very, very clean selection that's independent of resolution.  So let's do that right now.  So let's go in, grab that Pen Tool, and what we're going to do is we're just going to start to draw.  Now the way I like to do this is I like to create a rough path, you know, when I see everything, and then, I'll zoom it and refine it.  So we're just going to decide where we want to start and I think if we start right here, in the middle of the room here, so we can start from there and I'm just going to drag it this way a little bit because I want to create a little bit of a curve, and then, we're just going to click here and drag it up, and we're going to go there. So what I'm doing is I'm just going over those curved areas and then I'm just going to click on the areas that are not going to be so curved.  See that? So what I'm doing is I'm trying to create my little path here and the key to this is to do it with the minimum amount of points that you possibly can, because the less points that you make, the smoother the result is going to be.  So if you see an area like that that's actually going to cha nge,that's where I'll actually click it.  So I go, whenever I see a curve, we're going to go in there and see that flat line? Go to the end there and just create a curve there. And so, what I'm going to do is I'm just going to make the rough curve, and notice what I 'm doing is I'm clicking.  For these little corners there, I'm just going to click in the corner and leave it, and we're going to make that rounded later and shall pull it out a little big.  And notice, you know, the direction we pull is the direction that curve is going to start to create, and there we go.  We got another one there. And I'm going to pull this out this direction because I want to create a nice round curve. See that? And we're going to go there and pull that up, straight up, and go there.  See how we're creating that little curve shape? And we're going to go right to there, that going to be a bit of a challenge to do this one.  And let's go that way.  There we go, looking good.  You want really sharp points, so I'm just going to go up this way, and remember what I told you about using the path here? We're going to do this.  So I'm hitting theAlt or the Option key and I'm going to take that point and I'm going to drag it back this way a little bit because what I wanted to do isóthere we goóI wanted a sharp corner there.  See that? And we can go there and right there.  I'm just pulling up a little bit.  And then, there's our close point.  All right, so we got a few little issues here we can see that we can go through and we can clean up.  Now we can use all the individual tools here or what we can do is we can just use the keyboard shortcuts and I like to use the keyboard shortcut.  But, first of all, what I'm going to do is I'm going to zoom in. So let's zoom right in here and we're going to go to our starting point.  Make sure that you can see both curves whenever you're doing this.  But whenever we hold the Ctrl or theCommand key, remember this will change it to a pointer to select that and you have to keep that down if we want to pull up these different areas.  See that? We're going to just kind of work on this.  I'm not too worried about this side because we'll come back to that, but let's click on there and we're going to make a nice curve.  So, I pulled this out,and we're kind of just changing the shape of where that's going.  See that? We shortened that.  Nice.  We've got a nice edge there.  So what I'm doing now is I'm just using the spacebar for the Hand Tool to go out.  Now, I like this side.  I don't want to mess it up.  SoI'm going to hit the Ctrl and I'm also going to hit the Option, you see that little "Plus"(+) and, now, notice how I'm just changing this one side by itself.  So what I'm doing is I'm not messing up what I've already done.  All right, let's grab the next one.  And ifI need to pull that, just drag it, just grab that point, and I can pull it right in, and we can just pull those individual points.  Nice.  All right, let's pull that one down,and let's grab that point.  There we go.  All right, so far so good.  Let's go here.  We want to create this point. Now notice that this is not even.  So one of the things that I can do is I can actually just click right here and see that little plus is already there.  I don't need any modifiers and that will add an extra point, so I'm going to hit my Ctrl or Command to pull that up. See that? And, now, we can work on these points.  So I want to split that, Alt or Option, while still holding down Ctrl or Command, and I can do that.  Let's grab the next point; looking good.  I want to split that one, so Ctrl or Command, and you can see that, you know, basically,just doing the same things.  If I want to create a little curve there, I'll do that and I can just drag that point down.  If you can't see your curve, just kind of go there.  Actually,let's go over.  There we go.  That's where I want it.  And I can just pull that out nice. All right. So, basically, what I'm going to be doing is just the same thing over and over again. And it's just a lesson in patience.  Now, you might find that this is becoming difficult at first, and, honestly, with a little bit of practice, this will get much, much easier. And, instinctively, you'll get to know when you want to split this, like I'm doing here,and help how to pull it.  Now this does take a little practice.  And, once again, you know,I've got some great little instructional things on PhotoshopCAFE on the written tutorial to show you, you know, just what the different tools do and how to use them. So, for example here, we've got a hard point.  We don't actually have a curve there.  See that? So in a situation like that, we're going to hold down the Alt or the Option key, and we're just going to pull this up, and notice what it does is it's just creating a curve using that Convert Anchor Point, so that's the Alt or the Option key.  Once again, I don know if I need to continue saying it, but I will, that to keep that Pen Tool, and the Path Select Tool, always hold the down the Ctrl or the Command key, otherwise you 're going to be adding points, and we don't want to be doing that.  All right, getting close,so let's go to this point here.  I just want to do that outside independently and I'm just going to go up to there, and I'm going to add a point there because I want to put something right in there.  This is going very, very, you know, we're getting right into this, soI'm going to do a Convert Anchor Point there, because I want a straight edge, and now I can pull that point.  See that? So we can get right into those little nitty-gritty spaces. All right, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to continue to do this because whatI'm doing now is going to be very repetitive, and, so, rather than make you sit here and have to watch what I'm doing, I'm just going to speed this up a little bit and we'll continue from then.  All right, there we go.  We've kind of made our path there, so let me just hit the Ctrl 0 (zero) to go out, and you can see we've gone across here, and we've gone and made a very nice path.  So what we're going to do is we're going to save this path right now, so we're just going to go up there to save the path.  We'll it car.  And what we can do is we can use this as a mask.  So you can go here and just choose the Select Tool and that will make a selection out of that path.  Notice the path is not going away or the other option that you can do is hit the Ctrl Command key and just click on the Path will do the same thing. So let's go in the Mask.  We're just going to create a new mask, and there we go, we 've masked it out.  So, let's have a look at this.  If you go in here, you can notice that this is a very, very sharp selection.  Look at that.  And if you want to go in and refine it further,of course, you can, but you've got a very, very clean sharp edge there.  And by doing that, this will work in print as well.  This will get a really nice selection.  A lot of the selection tools that you use when you try to create a clean edge, it doesn't always look good in print pixel perfect, basically, because we're using vectors.  So, anyway, so now that we've made this selection and we've cut this out, let's combine it with another photo.  And this is a photo, by the way, I grabbed from Adobe Stock, same as this other one, and I'm just going to drop it on here.  And you can see what a nice clean selection we've got. And look at this.  This is just super nice.  So let's just do a little bit of fun on this. What I'm going to do is I'm just going to scale it down a little bit and we'll make this into a flying car over our futuristic city, which happens to be Shanghai, China. And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to drop it right there, and then we're just going to create a little bit of a reflection effect, so we're just going to hit Ctrl-J to copy that; so we've duplicated it.  And we're going to grab the bottom one, Ctrl, Command-T, forFree Transform, right click, and we just want to flip this vertical.  All right, perfect. Hit Enter and we're just going to position that.  So I'm just going to drag it down here. I want some kind of a reflection, maybe about there.  And what I want to do is just Blend that reflection in, so I'm going to apply that Mask, see that we got a layer mask there. If we try to mask that, it's going to reveal all that transparency.  See that? We don want that to happen, so I'm going to right-click and then choose to apply the layer mask. And, now, we can create a new layer mask.  Grab that Gradient Tool, and then, just click down like this, and we can kind of create that little reflection effect.  Now you can play around with that effect and make it stronger, or we can reduce the Opacity, make it a little bit less.  And if we just put these together, we can move them around.  So, right now, I 've selected that, see how we can move them to a different position if we want.  And this is, essentially, we're creating a futuristic city with our flying car. Thanks for watching.  Now join the CAFE crew by clicking that SUBSCRIBE button and you 'll get new tutorials every week.  I hope you enjoyed this tutorial.  I know there was a lot of stuff in there.  Just rewind it if you need to.  Watch it a few times.  Check out the webpage for more information and just practice.  I really encourage you to just sit down, spend a little bit of time practicing the Pen Tool, and then, once you get the hang of it, it's going to be really easier, it will become second nature.  It's just going to take a little bit of practice for that to happen. So, anyway, thanks again.  Drop a Like right there, add a comment, and until next time,I'll see you at the CAFE.