The most simple newbie question ever?

aquastealth · 02-14-2007

I have worked quite a deal in Photoshop but Ive never figured out how to draw a basic circle or rectangle with only lines and no fill?

No matter what I try it gets filled with color I want it to be like the line tool but to make circle/rectangle shapes.

I know the answer is probably obvious and that I may sound like an idiot but hey it doesnt matter at least you get a good laugh out of it

You can do amazing things in photoshop but
I sometimes wonder why Adobe made even some of the
simplest tasks so complicated?

/AquaStealth

agentxi · 02-14-2007

hey aquastealth,

basically you make the circle or rectangle using a shape the normal way you do it, but at the top of photoshop you should see a bar with extra tool settings (right below the menus) In these options you should see a bunch of tool options... going from left to right, the first 3 icons are your "shape layers", "paths", and "fill pixels"

you have 2 ways of doing this, the first way i would do it, is... using the "shape layers" which i assume is the default setting anyways.

hold down shift while creating the circle and it constrain it to become a perfect circle (assuming you have the ellipse tool selected), now it should create a shape layer with your circle filled, don't panic, here's what we do.

in your layers manager you see the 3 dropdown menu's defaults are "normal, opacity 100%, and fill 100%"

go to fill and put it down to 0%, now your circle's fill disappears, next we want to put a stroke on it...
to put a stroke on it, you just right click on your shape layer, and go to blending options and choose stroke, play with the settings, and hit "ok"

now the second method is to use the "path" in your tools options.

once you have the path made, you go to the layers manager, create a layer to put this path's stroke on...and then go to the "paths" tab.
once in there, right click on your work path, and go to "stroke path" and it will stroke your path whatever brush settings you decide to use.

I don't like using the 2nd method because you don't have as much control over the path/shape as you would with the first method. but maybe that's just me.

i hope this helps, if not i can do up a quick tutorial with screenshots to show you what i did/explained.

best of luck

-agentxi

aquastealth · 02-14-2007

agentxi: BIG BIG THX!

But honestly there must be a simpler way?
Or else my question was justified after all considering
how much text you had to produce to explain such an
easy operation. It amazes me, why doesnt Adobe
implement a simple option to the regular "line tool"
instead, to make it act as a circle/rectangle "shaper" ?

User friendliness ought to be the goal of every software
company these days

turvas · 02-14-2007

You also could:
Make a new empty layer. Use the rectangle/circle selection tool. Make a selection as large as you want the line to be. Then use fill to fill it with color. And then go select->modify->contract and contract your selection by 1 pixel. Then press shift+delete to cut and it's done.

**tamlin** · 02-14-2007

There are "empty" circle and square shapes supplied with the default set of custom shapes in Photoshop. Select the Custom Shape tool, load the default set of shapes if they're not loaded already (or select Reset Shapes... from the Shapes menu) and then choose either the Circle Thin Frame or the Square Thin Frame. You can then draw them as you want them, and use the Transform tools to reshape them afterwards if need be.

agentxi · 02-15-2007

ahh yes, thanks tamlin....as i was writing this i was thinking the whole time, there's something i'm missing...lmao

**tamlin** · 02-15-2007

This is yet another example of how, in Photoshop, there are lots of different ways to get to the same result. Just pick the one that works for you.

aquastealth · 02-15-2007

THX again now we are talking

Your right about the endless possibilities to do things in Photoshop
but I didnt know there were so many super complicated ways
of doing such a simple task.
Even with custom shapes you have to adjust more than necessary
to get what you. Where do you set the thickness of the lines?

I laugh a little inside everytime I think of it:
Photoshop one of the most well spread and respected
softwares cant even do what you can do in MS paint
in a second.

Otherwise PSP is great

**tamlin** · 02-15-2007

To be fair, Photoshop's primary function is as an image manipulation tool, not a drawing program.

class_act · 02-16-2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by tamlin

To be fair, Photoshop's primary function is as an image manipulation tool, not a drawing program.

That's why god made Illustrator.

**tamlin** · 02-16-2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by class_act

That's why god made Illustrator.

God made Illustrator? Does that mean he works for Adobe?

turvas · 02-16-2007

I knew there was a reason why so many people use adobe... THEY'RE BEING MANIPULATED FROM ABOVE! Argh! Me too! NOOOoooooo!

paulopires · 02-16-2007

I laugh a little inside everytime I think of it:
Photoshop one of the most well spread and respected
softwares cant even do what you can do in MS paint
in a second.

You are absolutly right...Welcome to Adobe software.
I call it a non friendly software. It's like an old software with advance features. There are things in Photoshop that doesn't make any sense and this is one of them and every time they make an upgrade it gets even harder to use.
There's a limit of what a software can do but Adobe doesn't seam to see this, and insted of turning it easyer and friendly to use they add more and more stuff.

**tamlin** · 02-17-2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by paulopires

There are things in Photoshop that doesn't make any sense

Well, this is the forum to ask for help if you're having problems! Give us a list of the things that don't make sense to you (maybe in a new thread) and we'll see if anyone can explain them.

paulopires · 02-17-2007

It's not a question of explaining things. Everything is explained in books, tutorials and foruns. The question is that you can do simple and basic things in other programs like Corel and Xara with only a few moves without having to learn anything and when you try to do the same things in Photoshop it's 3 times more complex and you have 10 ways of doing the same thing.

Yeh i know...Photoshop was ment for photography...so why they put a lot of stuff that doens't have nothing to do with photography.
Intuitive software...that's what i'm talking about.

Paulo