pen tool...

does anyone know some good tutorials on how to use the pen tool and free form pen tool?

It just takes practice....

Basically, you click once to place an anchor point. Now you play "dot to dot" only you will be making the dots as you go. The general rule of thumb is:

Make your path about 1 pixel inside the boundry of the object you want to extract. Do that by "click and drag" (with the pen tool, drag in the direction that your next "anchor point" will be placed...... you'll see a little "handle" come out of the node you just placed.... hold and drag around and watch how the path responds. that is how you make "smooth" curves.

I know I'm kinda rambling..... but I haven't ever seen a really "good" tutorial on the pen tool..... I know DBM has one but its not real good.

depends on what you want to use the pen tool for.

for creating curves such as the ones in this pic, for example, you would load up the Paintbrush tool and select a brush with the thickness you want. Now select the Pen tool. You would click once on the work area at the point which you want the curve to start from. This will leave a small gray box at the spot at which you clicked. Now click where you want the curve to end and don't release the mouse pointer yet. Drag the mouse pointer around to modify the curve until you reached one that you desire. Now, under the Paths window, click on the little round circle button with the arrow in it (it's at the top right corner of that window) and select Stroke path... In the new window, select Paintbrush and click okay. And that would be it. If you want to get rid of the Pen path, just select the path in the Paths window and click the little useful garbage button on the bottom.

ive been messing around with it some, i made a little sig thingy.. its still pretty messy but practice makes perfect



thanks guys!

i was using the freeform pen............................. i like it pretty good