Tutorial: Pen Tool, Creating a heart using

[jaz]

Here's a recipe for creating valentines using the path tool. The advantage to creating shapes with the path tool is that they are stored as scaleable, mathmatical vectors and can be resized from very tiny to very large without looking jagged and grainy.

Additionally, using photoshop 7's define custom shape, you can add your path shape to the shape menu, allowing you to easily draw custom shapes that you have created. These can be drawn as filled bitmapped shapes, paths or as shape layers...

1) Make sure you have snap to guides and show rulers on
2) Make sure guides are visible
3) Create 5 guides. Three vertical guides will represent the left, center and right sides of the heart. Two horizontal guides will represent the top and bottom.
4) The easiest way to create the guides is view->new guide, using the ruler tool to "guide" you.
5) Select the Pen tool and click once at each point of the heart. I have numbered my diagram according to the order I clicked in. You should see a shape like the red shape in the attached diagram...
6) Select the convert point tool from the pen tool's sub-category
7) Select one of the top corner points and then drag it up and towards the middle. It should gently curve the top corner of the heart. I have illustrated - in black - one side having been converted.
8) Once you have both sides done to your satisfaction, you can do several things from the path menu:

a) Create selection from path
b) Stroke path (creates a one pixel outline)
c) Save path (for future use)
d) Define custom shape

To delete the path, select the path with the path selection tool and hit the backspace. Make sure you have saved the path prior to doing this.