Learn Pen Tool

There are many selection tools in Photoshop but the pen tool is the only tool that gives you very clean and sharp selection because the pen tool uses “vector technology”.

So if you want to cut any object with sharp edges then you should have knowledge about “Pen tool”. So let’s learn it.

Here is my image and I want to cut out this lock and key with the help of “pen tool”.

First go and select the pen tool in tool bar. There are four types of pen tool we can see, but right now we will use the first pen tool.

Whenever start drawing path with pen tool, start it from any corner point of the object. Should take very few control points.

Now click and drag it, you can see a moving handle of control point; it bends the path as you can see. We can set our path properly with the help of this handle.

Now click and drag for the next control point and bend its handle this way to set it properly.

Path gets out of line because when drawing the previous control point we have bent its handle. So to overcome this problem just hold alt key and click on the last control point before you create a new one. It will remove the handle and allow you to draw the path properly.

This is the path panel. In this you can see the path you have drawn before some time. Just double click on it and save it.

Here is the path which I have created before. Click on it and see at the bottom of the path panel there is an icon called ”load path as selection”, by clicking on this icon you can convert the path into selection.

select the layer and press CTRL + J to create a new layer of selected portion.

Cut this hole properly from the path. So I have to go to the path panel and select my path again and see here in the “path finder” options, I have to choose “subtract front shape”.