Creating basic Photoshop shapes

Okay let’s begin.

The pen tool

Photoshops pen tool is the key tool used when creating custom shapes. Sure, it can also be done using the marquee tool but you won’t be able to achieve quite the same results with ease. So then, let me introduce you to the pen tool.

The pen tool is accessible from the Tools window which, if it isn’t visible can be opened by going to Window and then selecting Tools from the top menus. As you would expect its icon on the tools window represents a pen and is therefore easy to distinguish from the rest. Familiarise yourself with its whereabouts as you’ll be using it a lot more from today onwards.

So how does the pen tool work? The pen tool lets you place precise point (vector points) on your canvas. Click once on your canvas and you’ll see one of these points appear – click again and you’ll see another with a line joining them.

Congratulations, you’ve succesfully drawn a line. I know, it doesn’t sound all that exciting but this line combined with a whole load of others is what will make up your custom Photoshop shapes. Let’s continue – try drawing a rectangle as shown below.

And now here’s a little tip. When drawing your lines, if you need them to be perfectly straight you can hold down the Shift key on your keyboard whilst drawing. Doing so will snap your line straight. Awesome!

So we’ve got a rectangle out of the way – now let’s try doing some curves. Pay attention to this part as it can be a little tricky at first.

Start off by adding two points to create a perfectly straight line as shown here.

Now, with the pen tool still selected hover your mouse cursor over the center of the line, right in the middle. You should see that your cursos slightly changes and now has a tiny + symbol next to it. This means thath if we click it will add another point to our line.

We are now going to click on the center of our line to place a new point however this time instead of just clicking we are going to click and drag. Go ahead and do this – click the center of our straight line and slightly drag it in any direction. As you do this you’ll notice thath it has turned our straight line into a curve as shown here.

And there it is – your first curvy line.

Create your shape

Now that we’ve covered straight lines and simple curves it’s time to bring those two together to create your first real custom shape. The shape we’re going to create is this.

Okay, before we get started we need to turn on our grid. The grid in Photoshop lets you keep things precise and when used properly will let you create accurate shapes. To show the grid go to View >> Show and then make sure there is a tick next to Grid. We also want to snap to the grid. Snapping to the grid means thath if we click near one of the grid lines it will automatically snap our point to that position. To enable snap to grid simply go to View >> Snap to and make sure there is a tick next to Grid. Let’s begin, my canvas size is 280px by 230px.

Start by creating a horizontal line along the bottom.

Then, making sure that you make it proportional turn it into a triangle by adding a point in the middle at the top and then finally clicking back on your first point to close it.

Brilliant. Now here’s the tricky part. We’re now going to make the two angled lines into one rounded curve and to do it we’re going to need a little help from the “Convert Point Tool”. This tools is accessible from the same icon as the pen tool by just clicking and holding down until a little popout appears.

With the convert tool selected click on the top point and drag it to the left. Keep going until you are happy. Your shape should now look something like this.

And we’re all done with this shape. You’ve now used both straight and curved lines to create a simple custom Photoshop shape.

As you can see the pen tool can be used to create almost any shape. Take these basic steps to create some more complex shapes of your own.