need help with the pen

All I'm tryin to do is stroke a path that i made, but photoshop says, "could not stroke the layer because there is nothing to stroke" I have the path on a new layer, and when i put it on an existing layer, anything on that layer get's stroked, so i'm at a loss. Thanks for any help ya might have

There are two places to create a stroke, one under the edit pull down menu and one under the path palette pop-up menu.

If you use the stroke command under the edit menu on a new layer, the path has to be closed for the stroke to work. Try using the other stroke command under the path palette pop-up menu.

Wallus...

You didn't state which version of Photoshop you were using, and since I'm the kind of guy that forgets how older versions of software works soon after I upgrade, I'll reference the following to version 6 (I'm pretty certain all this info applies to earlier versions as well...if it doesn't...heh...I just gave myself an escape hatch :D):

I know of three places you can access the commands to stroke a path.

One is in the drop down menu that you access via the little triangle at the top right of the Paths Palette. The option you choose will be applied to whichever path is selected (If you have more than one).

Second, You can Option/ALT-click on any path in the Paths Palette to select and activate it, the Control-Click (Mac) or Right-click (windows) to access options for the path.

Third, you can access an identical menu by Control-clicking (Mac) or Right-clicking (windows) on the selected stroke.

You CAN NOT stroke a path by using the "Stroke..." command under the Edit menu...and it doesn't matter whether the path is open or closed. The "Stroke..." command under the Edit menu is strictly for stroking "marching-ant-style" selections, such as those made by the Marquee Tools or the Lasso Tools. This is where you're getting the error message.

Another thing to get clear about is that paths never associate nor attach themselves to any particular layer or channel. They are completely separate objects, and the only way you will see evidence of a path on a layer or channel is if it has been filled or stroked....then those pixels will become a part of whichever layer was active when you applied the fill or stroke. Even after doing this you can still activate that path, modify it and/or use it to create a selection on any other layer or channel.

Woah, thanks a lot, that was the best explanation I have ever heard. You should write tutorials! :D

Thanks Wallus, I appreciate the "Attaboy."

If you have Illustrator, you may want to check out a few tutorials I did. I'll give you a link for the newest one, and the other two I've done are linked at the bottom of that page. If you want to learn to use the Pen Tools, these will really help. Unfortunately, they're strictly for Illustrator. Some of the specific Operations can be adapted to work with Photoshop's Pen Tools, but there are a lot of things it can't do that Illustrator can.

I like writing tutorials and getting the screen shots together, etc....it's just that I plain stink at putting web pages together. I don't know enough about hand coding to tweak out problems that crop up when I use GoLive. That's the main reason I only have a few pages put together and not a full cohesive site.

Phosphor Digital Design's Illustrator Academy tutorials

u23 (and I would do the cool character but I have no idea what the keystroke is), if you're interested in doing some more tutes I'd be happy to create the HTML for them. Drop me an e-mail if you're interested...

Chris