Using Paths

This is a tutorial that will hopefully help you come to a better understanding of what paths are and how they can help you in Photoshop.

What is a path?
                    A path is an imaginary line of sorts that helps in the creation of many things in Adobe- Photoshop. They're mostly used when working with vectors but can also be used for a variety of things, that will be shown in this tutorial.

Using paths:-
The first thing i'm going to talk about is vector stuff, since that's the main purpose of paths and the pen tool.

The first thing which you have to do is, open up photoshop and have a document of whatever size you want, whatever background you want.

Once you have all of that setup stuff done, use the pen tool (shortcut P). Now, usually we use the good old fashioned pen tool, rather than the freeform one. the freeform one doesn't offer the amount of stability and accuracy/precision that the pen tool offers so better use the normal pen tool.

Now when you're working with vectors, you have to make sure that the settings are all set up right with the pen tool.

You want the box on the very left, the "shape layers" box, to be depressed. This makes it into a vector shape when you make your paths.

Ok. you have your document & your pen tool as well. you have your settings. So let us go ahead.

The pen tool basically just plots points on the canvas and then connects them in the order in which they were placed. to plot a point, you simply left click over wherever you want to place it.

As you continue to place points, you'll see the path to begin to fill in with your foreground color. This is your vector shape so far. (figure below)

Keep in mind, that these shapes have to be closed shapes. This means that you're going to finishing level wherever your path started. when you're ready to finish your path, simply left click over your original point. Before you click you should see a little circle appear in the lower right of your cursor. Just click and  your  simple vector shape has been created.

Of course, what if you wanted to make something that wasn't all straight lines? Fortunately, each of those points that you've placed have these things called handles. These handles are like little lines that are tangent to whatever curve you're trying to make.

In order to unlock the power of these handles, you want to convert point tool. It's located underneath of the pen tool on the toolbar. It looks like a little upside down letter V. The cursor for the "convert point tool" will look like a normal pointer until you select the path by clicking on it, then the point by clicking on it. The cursor will now be that upside down V that we saw in the toolbar. In order to adjust this point, simply click on the point and hold. While still holding, drag out away from the point. This will cause the path to curve around that point. See the figure below.

Let's pretend for a second that you don't want to make a shape with all nice smooth curves that flow into one another. A shape with something resembling the top of a heart perhaps. This may have been causing trouble for you while using the "convert tool" but it is actually quite simple to do.

Now after you used the "convert point tool" to make a nice little curve, you'll notice that you can still see that handles hanging out there on the side of the point that you where messing around with. If you want to make a point or something like that, grab one of the handles and move it. rather than both of the handles moving together, only one of them will move, allowing you to create different kinds of shapes.

Using this little technique, you can go from this:

to This:

or even this:

Now as far as vectoring is concerned, there isn't much else to tell. You now know how to make pretty much any shape of your choice. Though when you're vectoring, it's not going to be all black. you can decide on what color you want it to be beforehand and make that your foreground color OR you go to your layers palette.

To change the color, just double click on the part of the layer where it shows what color your vector is and simply change the color.

You're now all set to make vector art using paths. This is not all paths are good for though.

If you notice this carefully that, a vector shape is basically a layer completely filled with a solid color, then a vector mask on top so it's in a nice shape.

Lets say though that you have a nice shape, in this case we'll have a heart, and you wish to have a gradient filling it instead of a solid color.

Now anyone who's used Photoshop for a legitimate amount of time can tell, the best way to get a gradient into a shape that you want is to fill a selection with that gradient. I'd obviously want a heart shaped selection then. The problem lies in how to get that selection. The Lasso tool is a huge pain to get a nice smooth selection with. Or you could try fancy things with circle selections and such using those different selection booleans etc. That's all well and good, but for certain shapes those kind of tricks won't cut it.

A "pen tool" is the one that is frequently overlooked when making nice smooth shapes.

Now one must keep in mind, that a path is NOT a selection. It is merely a guide for things; in the previous case, for a vector mask to help make a vector shape.

now again come towards this thing:

As I told you to have the one on the very left selected (Shape Layers). When you're not making vectors, you should always have the one in the right center selected. It looks like a little square with a pen in the center of it (named Paths). Using this tool rather than the other will create just a path instead of vectors.

Now you can make whatever shape you want using techniques described earlier to achieve the desired shape.

NOTE!
Always remember the pre-made shapes while working in this area. On that little bar at the top where you change from the vector shape mode to normal path mode, there is a little button over to the right a bit that looks like a blob of some sort with an upside down triangle next to it (on my console it is called Custom shape Tool). Click it and a little drop down box will appear next to it with a little picture in it (named Shapes & the 1st picture which appears in mine is named as "Starburst"). Open that and you can select any premade shape there you like. you just drag them out like you do the circle or rectangle selection tools (you can hold shift you get the proportions right).
END NOTE!

Ok so now you have your path. If you open up the paths palette, usually tabbed with the layers palette)

I've labeled three buttons 1, 2 and 3. And there are three cool things you can do.

1. will fill the path with your foreground color.
2. will stroke the path. basically it's like the brush tool just followed the outline of your path.
3. This will turn your path into a selection. (the button to the right does the opposite). Once you have your selection you can do what you would normally do.

If you want to add some text along with your work. Make sure the path is visible and grab the text tool. just hover it over the path where you want to type and you should see a little squiggly line appear in the lower right of the little T cursor. Simply left click and then you can start typing and the text will appear along the path, following it's curves etc.