Learn the Basics of Photoshop’s Precision Pen Tool in 2 Minutes (VIDEO)
Photoshop’s versatile Pen tool enables you to easily accomplish a wide variety of transformational edits from creating masks, to making accurate selection and shapes. And it works its magic quickly with uncanny precision.
Pay close attention if you’re not taking advantage of everything the Pen Tool can do, because this two-minute tutorial from Edited by Isaac explains everything necessary to get started today. Isaac is a Serbian post-processing expert whose new YouTube channel prides itself on demystifying editing techniques for beginning Lightroom and Photoshop users.
The Pen tool can be found in the toolbar on the left of your workspace, and Isaac suggests thinking of it as more precise selection tool when you want to create a shape or a path. He begins with the former by clicking on the screen to identify an anchor point, and then clicking again and again to creates as many anchor points as necessary.
You can refine the shape further by clicking and holding to curve any of these points. Isaac moves on to various path options that utilizes anchor points to create a mask, path or unique shape. When making a selection with the Pen tool you can feather the radius and enable or disable the Anti-Alias option.
Once you’ve created a path, the Pen tool also facilitates making a precise mask within an image that can easily be modified by dragging on one or more of your anchor points. When you right-click on the tool a dropdown menu appears with options for adding or deleting points and making unusual hand-drawn shapes.
There’s also a curvature option that can fills the selection with a color of your choice or creates a stroke around the perimeter. There are a few more tricks to learn and Isaac provides clear illustrations to demonstrates the benefits of each of these tricks in practical ways.
For those just getting started in Photoshop or Lightroom, the Edited by Isaac YouTube channel is a great resource for expanding your skills.
And be sure not to miss last week’s primer with another image-editing expert who demonstrates a new Lightroom masking tool for improving landscape photographs by enhancing skies, balancing colors and light, and adding depth to an image. It also works wonders for adjusting environmental portraits.
