Advanced' Photo Effects Tutorials

There's several ways to use the pen tool and Bezier curves in illustrating in Photoshop. This is the method I use to draw more accurate curves for the human figure. For efficiency, I will draw only one leg in profile view here. Keep in mind, I am not the best artist, but this tutorial should give beginner illustrators a good start to work from.



I am using PS7, but the concepts are the same for other versions.



Start by drawing a rough sketch of the leg on its own layer. It can be very rough, it will not show in the final image. It's just to give you the shape and proportion of the leg.:
(pic 1)

Click and hold down the pen button as shown. Choose the first option, Pen tool. Make sure that the paths button is clicked on the top bar as shown.
(pic 2)








With the pen tool, pick a starting point at the top or bottom of a curve (I chose the top of the leg). Don't pick a point in the middle of a curve. Click and drag just a slight bit. It will become an anchor point with two handles in the direction you dragged.
(pic 3)

Find the next obvious next curve point the fewer anchors you add, the smoother your curves will be, but you want enough to be able to vary the shape of the curve. Click and drag slightly. When you let go with the mouse, it won't look very good it won't follow the contour of your sketch. BUT if you hold Ctrl and click on the top handle, you can stretch it to fit the curve to the sketch (as shown).
(pic 4)








Continue around the leg, following the sketched contours. Keep clicking & dragging slightly to make handles and then Ctrl while clicking the handle to manipulate the curve.
(pic 5)








If you accidentally forget to drag while making a new anchor point, it will not have handles. Just go one step backward in your history pallet (or click Ctrl+Z undo) and try again. Occasionally you'll lose the continuity of the path if you try to make a new anchor and it doesn't connect, just undo it, then carefully click on the last anchor point you made (the anchor itself, not the handles) and carry on.

The last connection will be to the first anchor you made. When you click on it, it will not look right (see picture).
(pic 6)








Hold down Ctrl while you click that starting anchor to see its handles. Still holding down Ctrl, stretch the handles until that last curve looks right. Your path is complete.
(pic 7)

Now that we have a path, we can name it and save it in our paths pallet. Click on Paths next to Layers in the pallet. Double click on the path and name it. Here, I've named it leg.
(pic 8)

Go back to your Layers pallet and make a new layer. This first one will demonstrate stroking (outlining) the leg path, so I named the layer leg-stroked. With this layer active, right click inside the path on the image and choose stroke path.
(pic 9)








The next box lets you choose how to stroke it. For the purpose of this tutorial, the brush tool makes the best example. Make sure that your active brush is set to the color, size and attributes you want (I used black, size 5, soft brush at 100% opacity for this example).
(pic 10)








Choose brush and click OK. Voila, we have the outline of our leg with the Bezier curves!
(pic 11)

You can also fill the path with color. Make a layer for the fill (I called it leg-filled). Next, choose the color for the fill I picked a fleshy peach color. Right click inside the path on the image and this time choose fill path.
(pic 12)








You can choose lots of fill options as well, but I simply chose Foreground Color and clicked ok. Play around with the other options to see what they do as well.
(pic 13)








Now we have a fleshy colored leg all filled in.
(pic 14)

You can still see the path, though. To make it disappear (but still accessible on the Paths pallet), right click and choose Make a Selection. It doesn't matter the parameters you choose, just click ok.
(pic 15)








You'll see the selection like shown:
(pic 16)








Now just deselect it (Ctrl+D or Select>Deselect).

Here is a view of the filled leg and stroked leg without the path visible:
(pic 17)








Here is a view of the filled leg without the path and stroked leg visible:
(pic 18)








From here, you can lock the transparancy of the leg-filled layer and start adding shading and details as you see fit. Keep working with the pen tool, since the more you use it, the easier it gets to handle and master it. Explore the other pen options that allow more control and adjustments after you get the hang of this tutorial. You can reposition anchors, transform your path, etc. with those tools later, but this is enough to start with for now.