Can't draw lines in CS

[ndicki]

Forgive me for being a complete beginner (comparatively), but... I've just upgraded to CS, and there are one or two things that continue to fox me. Start with this:

In Photoshop 7 , I could draw a line using the pencil/brush tool (sorry if the terms are incorrect, I've got the French language version) by doing a first click where I wanted the line to start, moving to the other end, pressing shift, and clicking again. Hey presto, a nice line with the selected form. I can't get CS to do this. Any advice? Thanks!

[PatrickB]

Hm, press the shift-key BEFORE the first mouse-click

[mistermonday]

Welcome to Retouch Pro!. Why don't you try the Shape tool which you will find directly under the Text tool. If you click and hold the mouse down it will display a number of different shape tools. You can draw perfectly straight lines, as paths or as a vector. You can choose color and width and add arrows.
Regards, Murray

[Trimoon]

Welcome,
The pencil/brush tool, is great for drawing. What you need to do is hold the shift key down during the whole procedure of drawing and what it will do is draw lines in between each point. This is great for tracing, and here are a couple of tips:

Under filter up on your menu bar select Stylize> Diffuse. When the window pops up for Diffuse, you want to select Anisotropic. Anisotropic shuffles pixels in the direction of the least change in color. But I use it to create a smooth transition between the different points of a line drawing. In other words, it takes the bumps out.

This tip is for those of you who are using a tablet.

If you find your graphics tablet a little slick and hard to control when drawing lines, slip a piece of paper over the tablet and drawl directly on the paper. This will give you added friction which in turn gives you better control over your pen. An example of this is when you try to draw your signature on the tablet. You try to sign something, and it looks nothing like what you would normally create when signing on a piece of paper. This will fix that problem.

[ndicki]

Patrick and Trimoon, thanks - but that one gives you only vertical or horizontal lines - and in CS they seem to be LESS regular than they were in 7; what I was after are simply lines between any two points, usually not vertical or horizontal though. The shape tool is fine for hard-edged lines, though I usually use it in Image Ready to draw all my structural lines - I do textures for virtual aircraft - onto one layer. What I'm looking for here involves using the brush tool to get nice straight soft edged lines, for shadows, for example.

[duwayne]

I just tried drawing a line as you described. Works fine on my XP based PC using Photoshop CS.

With Brush or pencil tool
- click on the starting point
- move the cursor to the ending point
- depress SHIFT key
- click once

[Trimoon]

You definitely have some sort of problem unique to your system. I can draw in the manner in which you described. I used this methods for tracing.
Steve

[ndicki]

OK, thanks - I'll reinstall it and see from there. The next one - when using the technique you described, for vertical/horizontal lines, it doesn't do a single line as such, but a series of dots; I know this is to do with settings, but which? I've tried varying the hardness, but it doesn't do much if anything: Maybe a related problem...

Thanks for putting up with all this!

[mistermonday]

If you are getting dots then it sounds like your spacing is set too high. Go into your brush palette and check the spacing slider in the brush properties.
Regrads, Murray

[ndicki]

Cheers, Murray - got it fixed. Mind you, it's one to remember as I didn't know it before. And uninstalling and reinstalling fixed the other problem, so I'm back on the road again - thanks to all!