The Pen tool is one of the most frustrating tools for some of my
university students but it doesn't have to be and once you really understand how
it works, it's much easier. So go ahead and go to File, New and then just create
a new file with enough space to work with. And then if you see on the Tools panel,
there's a tool called Pen tool, or you can just press P on the keyboard.
And how this works is, I'm going to set a fill to some kind of color so we can see it
on the screen and then for the stroke, we'll have black is fine for this example.
I'll make it a little bit thicker so we can see. And then the Pen tool, if you just want to
make straight lines, all you got to do is click and let go, click and let go, click and let go, click and let go
and then we can close out the path because right now it's not closed yet.
So close it out and now we have a closed path made up of four anchor points and
four paths in between. So at this point I can choose the Direct Selection tool
and click and drag the path, click and drag the anchor point and so on.
Now what if you want to create a curved design? Well you just got to click and drag
with the pen tool. So go back to the Pen tool and let's just say we wanted to make a wave.
So click, click and drag and then click and drag up here. Now you notice, if this was a
car going along a path, it's going to have momentum coming round this curve. It's going
to go this way and then come back like so. You can see the preview of it there.
So if I click, you'll see it keeps going. What if we don't want that? What if we wanted to go
straight back?
Well this is what we need to do. I'm going to press CTRL or Command Z and Undo.
Now all you have to do to reset that angle. You have to click on that... it adds that little
convert anchor point icon in the lower right hand corner of the cursor.
So I click that and now I can set the angle to go back like that. So that's using the
Pen tool to add curved paths and not just straight paths. So I'm going to delete that and hopefully that's
clear how that works at a basic level. You just click, click and drag, click and drag
and you can create different shapes and you can close out the shape if you want like so.
And then you can edit it of course with the Direct Selection Tool
You can move paths, change the curve of that path with the handles and so on.
Now if you click and hold on to the Pen tool, you'll see there are a couple more options.
There's Add Anchor Point Tool , Delete Anchor Point tool and then Anchor Point tool.
What those do, well just select the Add Anchor Point tool and you can actually add an anchor point
to something you've already drawn and then you can click and drag it to move it out,
change the angle of it and so on. So if I use this in conjunction with say, a shape
which we cover in a different lecture. Let's just create a square here and then on
the Add Anchor Point tool, right now if I use the white arrow for example, I can click
and drag, I can just move the paths and I can also move the anchor points, but I
can't really do anything right here. What you can do is the Add Anchor Point
tool will add an anchor point there, there and wherever we want, then use the white Direct Selection
tool and you can click and drag it and move it around, like so. So you can can use the
Add Anchor Point tool and the Delete Anchor Point tool with any shape that we've drawn using the Pen tool or
the Pencil tool or any of these shape tools down there. And the Delete Anchor Point tool
just does that. If you want to delete an anchor point, it will remove that so then
the two anchor points that are left just make a straight line, and we can add ones
in as well.
Now that fourth one, Anchor Point tool. What that does is it converts an anchor
point and I will show you what I mean here.
Delete this. If I just draw, say a square out again and then I have the Anchor Point tool.
If I click it and drag, it will give me these handles.
So now I can actually turn this into a curved path here, whereas normally you can't.
If I have the white Direct Selection tool and click and drag, it's just a straight
anchor point with straight paths on either side. Use the Anchor Point tool, you can
convert it by clicking and dragging on one of them and it pulls out those handles.
If you want to convert it back though, just click it again, click it again. It goes
back to a default anchor with no handles. Now when you have the Anchor Point tool
selected, if you press CTRL on the PC or Command on the MAC, it does toggle to the
Direct Selection tool, and if you had the Pen tool selected and you hold the ALT on the PC
or OPTION on the MAC, it turns into the Anchor Point tool. So if you're drawing
something out like so and you want to convert one of the anchor points, you can
just hold on to ALT on the PC or OPTION on the MAC. If you hold onto CTRL on the PC or
Command on the MAC with the Pen tool selected, that will toggle it to be the
Direct Selection tool. So if you're drawing and you want to just move one of
these anchor points, you can just hold down CTRL or Command, move it and then
keep drawing.
You can also change
a little bit about the way these paths are moving in between steps. So what I
mean by that is, if I hold SHIFT, it will go at certain angles. So you see it kind of
constrains it to certain steps as opposed to not holding SHIFT as you draw
and it's just a free-form mode.
So that's the basics of the Pen tool and a couple of keyboard shortcuts to know. We can use
the Pen tool to trace over images to give a stylized illustrative effect.
We're going to be using the Pen tool in this course to create logos and adjust logos.
So practice with the Pen tool and hopefully you will get used to how it
works. It just has a little bit of a learning curve but once you figure, it out
it can be pretty useful. I'll see you in the next lesson.