Sponsored by the National Association of Photoshop Professionals. Learn More

Quick Shapes

 

Use the Lasso tool ( L ) or Polygonal Lasso tool to rough-in a shape.  After making your selection, open the Paths panel (Window>Paths), press-and-hold the Option (PC: Alt) key, and click the Make Work Path From Selection icon at the bottom of the panel. Choose a suitable Tolerance from the ensuing dialog and click OK to create the path. Grab the Direct Selection tool (nested under the Path Selection [ A ]   tool in the Toolbox) and edit the path as necessary to achieve the proper geometry and smoothness. Control-click (PC: Right-click) the path and select Define Custom Shape, name it, and click OK.

Spread the word:
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • NewsVine
  • Technorati
  • BlinkList
  • Design Float
  • Mixx
  • Reddit
  • Slashdot
  • SphereIt
  • StumbleUpon
  • LinkedIn
  • MySpace
  • Fleck
  • Netvibes

3 Comments

  1. Michelle said on — June 27, 2009 @ 7:41 am

    Great tip! I can’t wait to get home and try this one out! The tip of the day is my favorite feature of this site – So many good little tidbits that I didn’t know!! Thank you!!

  2. Michelle said on — June 28, 2009 @ 7:30 am

    Thank you so much for this tip! I can’t tell you how much this is helping me right now! I have a job of extracting karate portraits from a flat background and putting them on custom backgrounds. This tip has cut my work time in half. What a great way to use a fast selection tool and not lose the quality you can achieve with the pen tool! Way to go!!

  3. Notable NAPP Links for the Week of June 21, 2009 | My Home Sweet Home Pingback on — June 28, 2009 @ 10:30 pm

    [...] Quick Shapes in Photoshop [...]

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a comment

Adding Keywords to Multiple files

In Bridge, you can add keywords to images to make searching for pictures a little less cumbersome. You don’t, however, want the process to become tedious as well. By either Command-clicking (PC: Ctrl-clicking) or Shift-clicking on images, you can select multiple files inside Bridge. Once you have the files selected, you can go to the Keywords panel and turn on any keyword you like. This will apply the keyword to all of the files that you have selected. It takes away a little bit of the pain of categorization, but just a little.

Read More Tips

Tip of the Day
 
 
Kelby Training