7 Pencil Tool
Used for drawing
hard edged lines
Found at #20 in the Toolbar diagram at left
The pencil is grouped with the brush
tool in the toolbar. If the tool you want is not showing in the toolbar,
click on the one that is. A pop-up menu will appear and you can select
the one you want.
This tool is used when you need a harder edge than what you get with the brush.
The basic drawing procedure is to 1) choose your foreground color by clicking on the foreground square in the toolbox (#12 in the diagram at left) or the Colors palette 2) click on the pencil tool in the toolbox 3) set your options (explained below) 4) select a brush from the brushes pop-up palette in the options bar 5) drag in the image to draw.
Note that you can limit the area that lines can be applied to by making a selection and then drawing inside it. Lines will only appear within the selections outline, even if you drag over areas outside of it.
Straight lines can be drawn by clicking once in the image where the line should begin, and then Shift clicking where you would like the line to end.
If you choose Edit > Fade immediately after using this tool, you can change the opacity and blend mode of the strokes you have just applied.
A shortcut for changing brush sizes while using any of the painting tools is to press the left bracket [ to decrease brush size, and the right bracket ] to choose a larger brush. Shift-right-clicking on your document while using this tool will open the blend mode menu next to the cursor.
The keyboard shortcut key for the pencil is the letter B. You can toggle between the pencil and paintbrush tool by holding down the Shift key while pressing the letter.
The illustration below is the pencil tool’s options bar. To find any tool presets that have been made for this tool, click on the tool’s thumbnail at the left end of the options bar. To reset the tool to its default settings, right-click on the tool’s thumbnail and choose Reset Tool from the menu that appears.
To choose a brush size and type, click on the brush thumbnail. A pop-up
palette of available brushes will appear. Press Enter or click on your
document’s blue title bar to close the palette after you’ve
chosen a new brush. If you want to access the full brushes palette with
its many options, click the brushes palette button at the far right end
of the options bar.
You can also right-click on your document to open the brushes pop-up palette next to the cursor. For more information on brushes, please see the Brushes in 7 tutorial. If you are still using Photoshop 6, find information on the your brushes palette on the old brushes page.
The box titled Mode, and showing Normal is a drop down menu of
all the blend modes you can choose
from. The Auto Erase check box, when selected, will draw the background
color over the foreground color if you click and drag on a spot
containing the foreground color. However, if you click on a color other
than the foreground color, and drag, it will draw with the foreground
color. Very confusing, if you ask me.
The Opacity percentage determines how transparent the colors applied will be. A setting of 100 % draws a completely opaque line. Lower values are transparent according to the percentage chosen. You can type in a value, or set it by using the slider which appears if you click on the little arrow to the right of the percentage value.
If you have doodled with a tool’s options and want to get back to the default settings, right-click that tool’s icon at the far left end of its options bar (in Photoshop 6, left-click). Choose either Reset Tool to reset only the current tool, or Reset All Tools to restore default settings to every tool.
Please note that all descriptions, and illustrations featured refer to files which are in Photoshop’s .psd format, and which are in RGB color mode. Other file formats, and color modes may generate different options. Some Photoshop features are not available for images not in .psd format, or RGB color mode. To find what color mode your image is in, choose Image > Mode.
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