Pen selection tool

The pen tool works exactly the same, except the pen path is defining the outer edge of our shape, not a selection. The pen tool simply creates anchor points each time you click. It connects all those anchor points with a solid line, otherwise known as the pen path.

There is no limitation on how many anchor points you can add so feel free to go crazy when creating your pen paths. When you click and create two anchor points the connecting pen path is always a straight line. This is all fine and dandy until we need to make the path curve around something… uh oh, now what?

If you are wanting to create a curved line in your pen path, click and drag your mouse to curve the path. Do this each time you are creating a new anchor point around a curve! These are called the Control Arms. The control arms allow you to alter and change the curve of your pen path simply by adjusting them.

You will adjust the control arms automatically when you click and drag your mouse while creating a new anchor point. Rather than having to delete all the other anchor points you had already created, just hover over your pen path line and wait for a plus icon to appear beside the cursor.

Once you see the plus icon, click on the pen path to add a new anchor point. This new anchor point can be adjusted exactly the same as any other! To delete an anchor point somewhere along your pen path, simply hover over the anchor point and wait for the minus icon to appear beside your cursor. Once you see the minus icon, click on the anchor point to delete it from your path.

If you want to delete your most current anchor point, just click on that anchor point and press delete on your keyboard! Unfortunately a pen path cannot be applied to a layer mask, so how can we convert it into a selection? Method 1: Once you have a complete pen path by linking it back around to the starting anchor point , go up to the tool bar at the top of your window and select make selection.

Method 2: Once you have a complete pen path by linking it back around to the starting anchor point. Once you have completed the path, right click inside of the pen path and click make selection.

Next the Make Selection Dialogue Box will appear, asking you to set the feather radius. I always set my feather radius to 0. If you want the selection to have more of a blurred edge, increase the feather radius to a higher number like 10 pixels and above for a more noticeable blur. Finally, check off the anti-aliased box and ensure your operation is set to new selection. See below for example.

Once all that is complete, click OK to turn your path into a selection! To complete the process of removing your background, add your now active selection to a layer mask to remove the background non destructively. These black and white lines represent a selection. Clicking the layer mask icon to create a layer mask from the active selection.

If you are wanting to define a new shape with the pen tool, first be sure to change its setting from path to shape in the top left corner of your tool bar. After selecting shape you will have fill and stroke options. Fill: Defines what colour your shape will be. Stroke: Defines how much outline of a designated colour will surround your shape. The pixel mount defines how thick this stroke will be around your shape.

Below are a few examples of stroke and fill working together to create a shape with the Pen Tool. Just as we learned previously, the pen tool works exactly the same when creating shapes. Click to add anchor points, click and drag to curve your shapes edge explained above under Pen Tool Basics. The only difference now is that there will be a colour fill that appears filling in the spaces between anchor points. Once you have gone through and defined the shape you were looking to create, it will have automatically loaded onto a new shape layer.

The mask will automatically be applied with the layer selection, removing the background. From here you can continue to edit the photo, adding a different background or continuing to refine the edge using layer mask tools. With the pen tool, you have complete, editable control over any selection inside Photoshop. And while it may not be the fastest selection tool in the Photoshop toolbox, when it comes to accuracy, the pen tool upstages the rest.

Tune in to Photoshop Week and watch live classes now. Hillary K. Grigonis is a web content writer and lifestyle photographer from Michigan. After working as a photojournalist for several years, she made the leap and started her own business and now enjoys sharing tips and tricks with emerging photographers.

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But that…. Visited 8, times, 1 visits today. Tip: Tapping P on the keyboard will also select the pen tool. Previous Post. There's just a few simple things you need to learn.

We've already seen how to create direction handles, by clicking with the Pen Tool and then dragging away from the anchor point. The further away from the anchor point we drag, the longer the direction handles will be. The longer the handle, the longer the curve. Short handle, short curve. Long handle, long curve. One of the nice things you'll learn rather quickly about the Pen Tool is that it is extremely forgiving. There's no reason at all to worry about getting things right the first time when drawing paths with it because we can go back and fix things up easily when we're done!

Did you place an anchor point in the wrong spot? No problem! Just move it where you need it! We'll see how to do that in a moment. Did you drag out a direction handle in the wrong direction? Not a problem. Grab the handle and rotate it into the direction you need. Again, we'll see how to do that. Is one of your direction handles too long or too short? No problem at all. Just click on it and then drag it longer or shorter as needed yep, we're going to see how to do that, too.

Paths are fully editable at all times, so there's absolutely no reason to worry about making a mistake or getting it right the first time. Doesn't that make you feel a little better already? As I mentioned, they're called direction "handles" because you can grab them like handles and move them around. Let's see how to do that. First, we'll look at how to rotate both handles at the same time.

Then simply click directly on the small diamond shape at the end of either of the direction handles clicking on the "line" itself won't work, so you always need to click on the diamond shape at the end of a handle to do anything with it and drag it around the anchor point to rotate it. As you rotate one of the handles, the other handle rotates along with it in the opposite direction, sort of like a see-saw.

You may also notice that as soon as you start dragging the handle, your mouse cursor icon will change once again, this time into the Move Tool icon, since we're moving something from one spot to another:. No need to keep it down the whole time. To resize a direction handle as you're rotating it, simply drag the end of the handle in towards the anchor point to make it shorter or drag it away from the anchor point to make it longer.

As I mentioned above, a shorter handle will make the curve shorter, and a longer handle will make the curve longer. You can't resize both handles at the same time though, so if you need to resize both of them, you'll need to drag each one longer or shorter separately. The only thing you can do to both of them at the same time is rotate them.

Now let's look at how to rotate the handles independently of each other. To rotate one handle without affecting the other one, first release your mouse button if you've been rotating or resizing the handles so your cursor changes back into the Pen Tool icon. You'll see your cursor change into the Convert Point Tool icon, which looks like a simplified arrow made of only two lines, almost like an upside down letter "v" except that it's not quite upside down.

Then, simply drag the handle around the anchor point to rotate it, just as you did before, and this time, the handle will rotate independently of the other one, breaking the connection between them:.

You don't have to hold it down the whole time. If you're in the process of rotating a handle, simply drag it in towards the anchor point to make it shorter or away from the anchor point to make it longer. Yes there is. It won't resize both handles at once, but it won't break the connection between them either so you'll still be able to rotate them together if you need to. Even if you don't rotate the handle as you're resizing it, the connection will still be broken.

Good question, and the answer is no. We've covered a lot of information here about working with direction handles, so before we move on and start drawing some actual curves, let's do a quick recap:.

Okay, that pretty much covers the basics of how to control the direction handles. Let's see how we can use them to draw some curves! We've covered a lot of ground so far. We know about anchor points and direction handles. We know that in order to draw straight path segments, all we need to do is lay down a series of anchor points wherever we need them simply by clicking with the Pen Tool, and as we add more and more anchor points, we add more straight sections to our path.

We know how to create direction handles and how to rotate them, either together or separately, and how to resize them. One thing I didn't mention yet is that regardless of whether our path consists of straight lines, curves, or a combination of straight lines and curves, converting it into a selection is done exactly the same way, and we've already learned how to do it, which means we're well on our way to mastering making selections with the pen!

All we need to do is get a bit of practice drawing curves, which is exactly what we're about to do! Let's once again start fresh, either by opening up a new blank document in Photoshop or by deleting what you've already done. We're going to draw our first curve so we can put all of our newly-aquired direction handle knowledge to use.

First, with the Pen Tool selected and the Paths option selected in the Options Bar, click once somewhere in your document to add an anchor point. Just click, don't click and drag. You should have one single anchor point on the screen when you're done.

Then, move your mouse cursor up and to the right of your initial anchor point. Click again to add a second anchor point, but this time, drag your mouse a little to the right of the anchor point to drag out direction handles.

Hold down Shift as you drag to constrain your movement to a horizontal direction. As you drag out the direction handles, you'll see your path appearing as a curve between the two anchor points! The further you drag your mouse, the longer you make the direction handles, and the more of a curve you create:. Click down and to the right of the second anchor point to add a third anchor point. This time, don't click and drag, just click:. As soon as you add the third anchor point, a second path segment will appear, joining the second anchor point with the third one.

And because our second anchor point has direction handles extending from it, this new path segment is also curved! We now have a nice, smooth arc starting from the first point on the left, then passing through the anchor point with the direction handles up top, and coming to an end at the third point.

One thing you may have noticed, and you can see it in the screenshot above, is that when you added the third anchor point, the direction handle extending out the left side of the second anchor point disappeared.

It's still there, Photoshop simply hid it from view. As soon as you do, the missing direction handle reappears as if it was there the whole time which it was :. Again, hold "Shift" as you drag to constrain your movement horizontally, and watch what happens. As you increase the length of a handle, you get more of a curve, and as you decrease its length, you get less of a curve.

Also notice that each handle controls its own side of the curve. The handle on the left controls the curve coming into the anchor point from the left, and the handle on the right controls the curve flowing out from the anchor point on the right.

Here, I've made my handle on the left shorter, and as we can see, there's much less of a curve now than there was originally, almost becoming a straight line. I've also made the handle on the right longer, and as a result, the curve on the right is now much more pronounced. The faint curve is the original for comparison:.

Now let's try rotating the handles. Here I've dragged my left handle down and to the right, and the angle of the curve on the left changed along with it, now appearing as more of a slope as it rises up towards the anchor point.

By dragging the left handle down and to the right, I caused the right handle to rotate up and to the left, and again, the angle of the curve on the right changed along with it, now rising above the anchor point briefly before making a steep decent down to the anchor point on the right.

Again, the faint curve is the original for comparison:. The Dreaded "Loop" One thing you want to avoid is rotating the handles too far, which will cause your path segments to overlap and create loops.

Here, I've rotated my handles all the way around so that the left handle is now on the right and the right handle is on the left, and notice what's happened. My path segments are now overlapping each other, creating a loop:. Loops can be caused by rotating the direction handles too far, as I've done above, but more often than not, they're caused by a handle being too long, making the curve too long and causing it to overlap with itself.

If that happens, which it does sometimes as you're drawing a path, simply shorten the length of the direction handle. Most people end up creating a whole bunch of loops in their path when they first start working with the Pen Tool, so don't think you're the only one.

No need to panic or become frustrated though. As I said, the problem is most likely being caused by a direction handle being too long, and all you need to do is shorten the handle to "un loop" the loop!

Now, what about rotating the direction handles independently of each other? Click on the end of a handle to select it, then drag it with your mouse to rotate it and this time, the other handle will stay in place, breaking the connection between them. Notice how once again, the angle of the path segment on the right changes to match the new direction of the handle, and this time, the handle on the left, along with the path segment on the left, both stay in place. My path now looks a bit like a shark fin:.

One thing we haven't looked at yet is how to move an anchor point. If you recall, I mentioned on the previous page that the Pen Tool is extremely forgiving, and one of the reasons for it, besides being able to rotate and resize our direction handles after we've created them, is that we can easily move anchor points from one spot to another if we need to.

As we've already learned, anchor points anchor a path into place. The anchor points themselves, however, are not anchored into place. You can move an anchor point anywhere, anytime, and any path segments that are connected to it will move and adjust right along with it. Any path segments connected to it will move with it to the new location. Here, I've dragged my middle anchor point down a bit from its original location again, the faint path marks the original location for comparison.

Notice how the path itself has changed shape to adjust to the new location of the anchor point:. Normally, when outlining an object with a path to select it using the Pen Tool, you won't need to move to an anchor point quite as far as what I've done above, but it's very common to go back around your path after you've created it and nudge a few anchor points here and there to fine-tune the path.

Once you've selected an anchor point, you can nudge it up, down, left or right using the arrow keys on your keyboard. What if I didn't want both of my path segments to be curves? What if what I needed was for the first path segment to be curved, but the second one needed to be straight? I'm going to delete my existing path and start over again. First, I'll click to add an anchor point to start things off. Then, just as before, I'll click to add a second anchor point up and to the right of my initial point, and this time, I'll drag out direction handles, which will create a curved path connecting the two points, giving me exactly what I had way up at the start of this page:.

I now have my initial curve, but I want my next path segment to be straight. If I was to simply click somewhere to add another anchor point right now, I would get another curve because I have that direction handle extending out from the right side of the last anchor point I added.

What I need to do is get rid of that one direction handle. Without a direction handle controlling the angle and length of a curve, we get a straight line. When I do, the direction handle on the right disappears, leaving only the one on the left:. Now, with the direction handle gone, if I click to add a new anchor point, I get a straight path segment between the two points :. I now have a curved path segment on the left and a straight one on the right! What if I wanted the exact opposite?

Suppose I needed to start with a straight path segment and then follow it with a curve? To do that, first I'll start by clicking to add an initial anchor point. Then, since I want a straight path segment, all I need to do is click somewhere else to add a second anchor point, and I automatically get a straight path connecting the two points:.

I'm going to keep my mouse button held down after clicking to add my second anchor point because I want my next path segment to be curved, and we know that in order to create a curve, we need a direction handle. As I do, a direction handle will drag out along with it:.

Notice that the direction handle extended only from the right of the anchor point, not from both sides, leaving my straight path segment on the left in place. And now that I have my direction handle on the right, all I need to do to create my curve is click to add a third point:. And there we go! I now have a straight path segment on the left, followed by a curved segment on the right.

Of course, most paths you draw are going to consist of more than just three anchor points. Let's say I wanted to continue this path, moving in the same general direction towards the right, and I want my next path segment to be curved as well. Just as I did a moment ago, I would leave my mouse button held down after clicking to add my third point. So far, we've only been dragging handles out towards the right, but what you really want to do is drag your handles out in the general direction you want the curve to follow.

I want to create a curve that goes up and to the right, so I'm going to drag out a small handle in that same general direction:. A good practice to get into is to keep your direction handles small when first dragging them out, since you never really know how long or at what exact angle they need to be until the actual curve appears, and the curve doesn't appear until you've added both of its anchor points.

Once you've added both points and the curve appears, you can easily go back and make any adjustments you need to the handles. You may even want to wait until you've drawn the entire path before worrying about adjusting the handles. With my direction handle created, I'm going to click to add a fourth anchor point, and I'm going to drag out direction handles from it as well:. I now have a third segment added to my path, this one being a curve.

Notice that this curve actually has two direction handles controlling it, one extending from the right of my third anchor point and one extending from the left of my fourth point:. The overall shape of this curve is now being controlled by the length and direction of both of these handles. Watch what happens to the curve when I move the handles. I'll drag the bottom handle down and to the right, and I'll drag the top handle up and to the left.

I'll also drag both of these handles longer. The curve is now a bit "S" shaped, and that's because the bottom handle is controlling the angle and length of the curve as it flows out from the third anchor point, while the top handle is controlling the angle and length of the curve as it flows into the fourth point.

With the direction handle gone, all I need to do now to add a straight path segment is click to add another anchor point:. We could continue this path for as long as we wanted, adding more straight segments and curves, but I think we'll stop here because we've pretty much covered everything we need to know about drawing paths with the Pen Tool at this point.

That was a lot of information to take in, especially if this is your first time learning about paths.