Drawing vs Painting

Photoshop's drawing tools are very powerful in their own way, but if you really want to create and draw an image from scratch, a better way to go about doing that would be to use Adobe's Illustrator program. Like Photoshop, Illustrator is one of the top industry standard drawing programs. The big difference between the two programs is the use of vector graphics (Illustrator uses them, Photoshop doesn't). Photoshop does have a few vector drawing tools, but vectors are what Illustrator was made to work with. Photoshop works with individual pixels within an image, meaning that it operates on raster graphics, which store picture data as a matrix of dots. Vector graphics, on the other hand, are made with mathematical equations and formulas. In effect, when you zoom in on a vector graphic, variables change to accomadate your action and you end up with a graphic that looks exactly the same, except bigger. When zooming in on raster graphics, however, the pixels (small dots) are simply enlarged, and you get a fuzzy, jagged picture with visible pixels.

Drawing Tools

Each of the expanded options (shown on the right) for Photoshop's drawing tools can be accessed by clicking on the standard tool button with the left mouse button (on a PC) or holding down the key while clicking on it (on a Macintosh).

Using the Drawing Tools

Pen Tool

The Pen tool is used to create drawing paths. You can create custom shapes and complicated curves that can be scaled easily. By accessing the expanded Pen toolbox, you can add, delete and covert points on your drawing path.

Path Selection Tool

The Path Selection tool is used to select an existing drawing path in Photoshop. You can use it to move, resize, copy, or delete paths. The Direct Selection tool is used to reshape a created path. You can also use it to delete a component of that path.

Shape Tool

The Shape tool is used to create paths with a certain shape. It creates the same path points that the Pen tool does. Each shape can be modified with the Path Selection tool.

Type Tool

The Type tool was discussed in the Type page.