pen tool & paths

Here’s a little more on the Pen Tool and the Paths feature.
Like I mentioned earlier, these sort of go hand in hand.

Open an image of a really cool hot rod like I have here –or go outside and take a picture (image) of your lame Ford Pinto.

Load that onto you computer and view it larger by pressing the Command and (+) sign together a few times.
Use Command and (-) sign to make it smaller Einstein. Duh.

Now get the Pen Tool (press P) and carefully draw a “path” around the door or some other part that you want to alter. This will create a thin line (it’s a path) Remember to join the ends by clicking on the first point you made.

Again choose Window / Paths from main menu bar - (make sure the little box marked Work Path is highlighted - click on it if its not) then choose “make selection” from within the little tiny drop down menu in the top right corner. Choose OK (feather radius to 0 or 1 – leave new selection & anti-alias checked).

Now you see the “marching ants”

Now go to your main menu bar and choose Select / Save Selection and give it an imaginative name like “dented Pinto door”. You may want to retrieve this later so you need to save it.

At this point you have created a selection which you can screw around with and do all kinds of real cool stuff with like:

Alter the hue
Remove the door (grab it with the Move tool and drag it away)
Copy & Paste the door into another Image
Duplicate the door
Reverse it (Edit /Transform /Flip)
Spin it around (Edit /Transform /Rotate)
Make it smaller or bigger (grab a node and move it)

Use your imagination for crying out loud - you're supposed to be a designer!

I don’t know why you would do these things, but the point is you can.
Now imagine what you can do to other images with this little bit of power.

Try putting a third eyeball in your buddy's forehead. Its fun.

Don’t you feel smart and important now?

hue & saturation

Color is a property of light.

If you don’t understand that, tonight when it gets dark, step in front of a mirror and look at your face. What color do your eyes appear to be? If your answer is red, come back later when you’re not quite so baked.

Now turn off the lights. What color do your eyes appear to be now?

See? Without light there is no color. Simple.

OK let’s see what we can do with a very simple feature called Hue & Saturation.

This means: what color is it (hue) and how “bright” does it appear (saturation).

Open your image (its not a picture – its an image) then press M to get the elliptical marquee tool - draw out a circle shape around your apple. To make it go away press Command D (deselect). Try again until you get the shape right.

By the way, I’m on a Mac so the keyboard shortcuts for you Window dorks are different - figure it out.

Now go to: Image / Adjustments / Hue & Saturation

Goof around with the 3 sliders until you achieve the desired effect. (red apple).

If your shape needs to be something besides a circle, oval or square…choose the pen tool (press P) - draw a shape by clicking around your object, making sure to join the ends by clicking on the first point you made. Think of it as a fence enclosing a piece of pixel-land. Close the fence.

BTW - There's a bit more detail on this in the next post (pen tool & paths)

Now choose Window / Paths / and choose “make selection” from within the Paths drop down gadget. Keep the feather radius to 0 or 1 for now until you get the hang of it.

You’ll see the “marching ants” crawling around your selection. Everything inside the selection will be affected by whatever you do at this point. To choose the opposite go to Select / Inverse.

Practice using the Pen tool along with the Path feature and soon you will be ready to roam the Earth grasshopper.