Drawing Shapes - Adobe PHOTOSHOP ELEMENTS Manual

CHAPTER 7
156
Painting and Drawing

Drawing shapes

You use the shape tools to draw lines, rectangles,
rounded rectangles, polygons, ellipses, and
custom shapes in an image.
The shape tools provide an easy way to create
buttons, navigation bars, and other items used
on Web pages.
Creating shapes
A shape layer can contain a single shape or
multiple shapes, depending on the shape area
option you select. You can change the color of a
shape by editing its fill layer and applying layer
styles to it.
To create a shape:
1 Select the rectangle tool ( ), rounded rectangle
tool ( ), ellipse tool ( ), polygon tool ( ), line
tool ( ), or custom shape tool ( ).
To select a hidden drawing tool, position the
pointer on the visible tool and hold down the
mouse button until the tools list appears. Then
click the tool you want.
In the options bar, do the following:
2
Select the Create New Shape Layer option (
•
• Click the color swatch to specify the color with
which you want to fill the shape. (See "Using the
Adobe Color Picker" on page 77.)
• Select a layer style from the Layer Style
pop-up palette to apply a predefined layer style to
the shape. (See "Using layer styles" on page 175.)
• If you're using the custom shape tool, select a
predefined shape from the Shape pop-up palette.
• Set additional, tool-specific options.
(See "Setting shape tool options" on page 156.)
3 Drag in the image to draw the shape.
To create multiple shapes in the same layer:
Select a layer in the Layers palette.
1
If desired, select a different tool in the options
2
bar or the toolbox to create a different type
of shape.
Before you draw, select a shape area option to
3
determine what happens at the intersection of
overlapping shapes.
Add ( ) to add the new area to the existing
•
shapes or path.
Subtract ( ) to remove the overlapping area
•
from the existing shapes or path.
Intersect ( ) to restrict the area to the inter-
•
section of the new area and the existing shapes
or path.
Exclude ( ) to exclude the overlap area in the
•
consolidated new and existing areas.
Drag in the image to draw new shapes.
4
Setting shape tool options
).
Each shape tool provides specific options; for
example, you can set options that allow you to
draw a rectangle with fixed dimensions or a line
with arrowheads.
Select a shape in the options bar, and click the inverted
arrow to display options for the selected shape.