How To Stroke Path In Photoshop

Photoshop Paths

What are Paths

Photoshop is not a vector-based application overall, just information technology does have a few vector-based features. The main one is Paths. To put it simply, Paths are vector-based line drawings. A path is made up of whatsoever number of line segments connected by ballast points. These line segments tin can be straight, curved, or a combination of the two. For something to exist a path, it has to be closed. This means that each anchor indicate has to exist connected to another ballast point.

How Do Paths Work?

Paths take one huge advantage. Because they are vector-based, they will look just as sharp and clear when resized. No matter the size or resolution, you lot tin get the aforementioned great detail and clarity. Another advantage to Paths is the ability to create your own unique shapes. Photoshop comes with a number of congenital-in shapes, but there are plenty more that you might detect useful. Once yous create a shape equally a path that you might desire to reuse in the future, y'all tin can save information technology. This way, it's e'er available as a path, so you lot tin reuse information technology whenever you want and scale it to the size y'all need without any baloney or loss of quality.

How Do You Employ Paths?

Paths have numerous practical applications that can make your artwork look significantly more professional. It'southward often used by graphic designers to make text follow a curve or make a circle, precisely separate objects from backgrounds, and stylizing blazon for artistic typography, using Bezier Points. It'due south fantastic for creating logos and other graphics that may need to exist scaled to a number of sizes in future projects. Digital artists will also find value in the tool as you lot are able to turn freehand drawings into precise vector-based images that can be manipulated and scaled every bit desired.

You can create paths in several ways:

With the pen tool: Describe lines with anchor points at the ends to make a path.
With the shapes tool: Use the Paths pick to turn whatever shape into a path.
Create as a path: You can purposefully create a path using either the pen tool or the shapes tool.
Convert to a path: You tin can convert an existing image, graphic, or even text into a path.

Just like with other elements, you are able to gear up a fill colour for the path and both the color and weight for a path'south stroke.

The Paths feature is probably one of the nearly underused and misunderstood features of Photoshop, but it can be an invaluable tool to add to your arsenal. Give this feature a try if y'all aren't already using information technology. Cheque out our instructional videos for more than Photoshop tips, tricks, and hints!