How to Use Pen Tool in Photoshop [Tutorial]

Today we will be looking at the pen tool in Photoshop, personally I think it’s one of Photoshops most useful tools and it can be used for a number of things. An added bonus of learning how to use this tool properly is that there are also similar tools in Adobe Illustrator and a number of other Adobe products and once you know how to use it in one program it’s fairly easy to figure out in the others.

So let’s start off by having opening a new document, I’m using a document size of 500x500px but in this case it doesn’t really matter that much, as long as it’s big enough for us to do some drawing on.

Also see: I have PSD – A Short Movie for Photoshop Lovers

Before you start using the pen tool let’s explain what it is and what it can do. You can access the tool either from the toolbar or by simply pressing the ‘p’ key on your keyboard. There are a number of variations of the pen tool within Photoshop, but for now we’ll stick to the main one.

The pen tool will allow you to create vector images (technically in Photoshop they are not true vectors, but let’s try and keep it simple). Vectors are images made up of a number of dots and connecting lines that together make a re-scalable and adjustable image, unlike bitmap images they are not made up of individually fixed pixels. The pen tool is used to set the vertices (the dots that a vector is made of) of a vector. If you are still confused about any of this then don’t worry, it’s a lot easier that it sounds and once we start using the tool you will probably understand a lot better.

Now let’s grab the tool by selecting it from the toolbar or pressing ‘p’ as previously mentioned. Once you have it selected, go to the blank canvas that we previously opened and simply click once anywhere on the page. You should end up seeing a small square, this is a vertex. With the pen tool still selected click again somewhere else on your canvas, this should create another vertex and Photoshop will connect them both. Click a third time somewhere else on the canvas and then click on the original vertex, you should end up with a nice vector triangle.

The shape we created there is a very simple vector, the complexity of these images can be amazing, there are some people that can create works of art using vectors, but for now let’s concentrate on knowing to create a curve when using the pen tool.

Do the same as you did before and use the pen tool to place a vertex somewhere on a blank canvas, then place a second vertex, but this time click and drag. When you begin to drag you will see two handles appear, these handles are used to control the curve between the connecting vertices. Mess around with it a bit until you get used to it and try to make a circle using just the pen tool.

Let’s have a look at some of the other key tools you need when creating vectors. Go to the tool bar and right click on the pen tool, this should bring up a number of variations, select the bottom ‘Convert Point Tool’. This tool will allow you to adjust those handles that control the curve. To do so simply click the line between two vertices and you should see the handles that control that curve appear, just click and drag the handles around and you will be able to control the curve.

Two other useful tools when it comes to dealing with vectors are the path selection and direct selection tools. To access the path selection tool click on it in the tool bar (it’s a black cursor) or simply press ‘a’ on your keyboard, this tool allows you to select and control all the vertices in a shape as a whole.

The direct selection can be selected in the tool bar by right clicking on the path selection tool and then choosing the direct selection tool (the white cursor), this tool allows you to select and control individual vertices.

Play around with all these tools and try to create some basic shapes and try to get used to using them as much as you can and in the next tutorial we will go over creating a simple object using a combination of these tools.