In this lesson you'll learn about the Pencil tool as well as the related
Smooth tool, the Path Eraser tool and the Join tool. The Pen tool is kind of similar to the
Brush tool but a little bit different. So go ahead and select the
Pencil tool. You'll notice the keyboard shortcut is N and if I just click and
drag, it looks like it works pretty, in a similar fashion to the Brush tool.
We have some options up here like the Stroke Size, the Path Color and then
Basic, Uniform and so on. Now the thing is, if I change, let's say Im going to ...this is
already selected and then change this from Basic and just add a style to it and when
I draw again it's not going to retain that style. The Pencil tool, it's
basically converting it to a brushed path when we change it to a custom brush
up here. So every time we draw a new path with points in between with the Pencil
tool, it's not going to have a customized brush definition up here. We can, however,
change the Size of course so I'll change that to something there and you can change the
Color just like you can with the Brush tool or the Paintbrush tool actually up here up
at the top or down at the bottom of the Tools panel. A quick tip. If you hold
SHIFT it will bring out the levels: CMYK, for Print, like Cyan, Magenta, Yellow,
Key or Black. So that's a shortcut or you can just click on it and choose
something from a swatch or of course you can double-click down at the bottom and
really customize the color. Now if I double click on the Pencil tool in the Tools
panel, it brings up some Pencil Options. Some of these are similar to the options for
the Paintbrush tool like Fidelity, how Smooth the drawing is and if you have Keep Selected
checked just like with the Paintbrush tool and the Blob Brush tool,
if you draw something, it will keep the most recent path drawn selected and then
another one you might want to try is Alt key toggles to smooth Tool so on a Mac this
would be Option key toggles to smooth tool. What that is, if you check that and
then click OK and so now I can press ALT on the PC or OPTION on the MAC and I will
smooth out a selected path. Now this does not work if the path is not selected.
Then I can let go of ALT or OPTION on the MAC and then I can draw again like so.
And I can continue it out like that as long as it's selected. So if you click and hold
on the Pencil tool, go to the Smooth tool, you can double-click on that. There is one
option: how smooth the result is. So you can customize that and try it.
But the Smooth tool does just that, it smooths the path. So if I just click and drag along here,
it's going to smooth it out a little bit depending on where I click and drag.
If I deselect something, like this one up here is not selected. If I click and drag over that,
it's not going to affect it. It has to be selected. Another one, the Path Eraser tool.
If i click over here, it doesn't do anything. It's not selected. So this one is selected though.
If I click and drag its going to erase that path and it's going to actually add some anchor points
right there and there on the end there, and we can take the white Direct Selection
tool and of course still adjust this where the anchor points are, the paths and
the handles to change the curve of that path as well. You also might want to try
the Join tool. So with this one you don't need to have the paths selected.
So I don't have anything selected here and you can click and hold on the Pencil tool and go to
the Join tool and just click and drag along a path point and then you want to
connect it to another one, then it joins it. Now if I choose the white Direct Selection
tool, you'll see it's added a path in between and they're joined just as
if we went to Object, Path, Join when they were both selected. So the Pencil tool
can be effective. If you just want to draw some things in, you don't have to worry about
stylizing any custom brush definition, We can change the Fidelity. I'll just show you
what this does. If I go to Smooth and click and drag, it's going to try to help me
out and make that more smooth, and if I go way over to Accurate. As your hand moves,
especially on a mouse, you have to be really close to what you're drawing. So you can
see the difference there, must select both of these. See how this one only has one, two
three, four points on it and then this one has like maybe two dozen or so,
that's because this was more accurate compared to where I was clicking and
dragging and this one's more smooth. So if you're using a tablet, it's probably easier
to draw more smoothly anyway. But try using the smooth settings on the Pencil tool as
well as the Paintbrush tool and if you want a smoother result, you don't have to worry
about keeping a steady hand as much or even on the Brush tool. You can bring it way over on Smooth.
You just click and drag. It's going to help you out a little bit make it a smoother path.
Just like with the Paintbrush tool, if you have an active selection, an
actively selected path and you had the Pencil tool up, if I just click and drag on
the edge here and draw like so, you'll notice now it's one path and it's not two different paths.
If you hover over the edge there on an anchor point and I can move it with
the white arrow or I can use the Pencil tool and click and drag and it will
continue that path. Hope you learned a lot in this lesson on the Pencil tool as
well as the Smooth tool, Path Eraser tool and the Join tool.
I will see you in the next lesson.