Pen tool is an acquired taste, much like coffee or beer,
It's pretty much terrible at first, But once past the initial lack of pleasure, you will realize the awesome benefits.
As has been said, it's great for simple, clean shapes such as word balloons/boxes.
(some) Keys to pen tool success:(the following applies to the pen tool in Adobe Illustrator, but the principles may apply to other progs.
)
-Point and click will give you straight lines. (It creates anchor points actually, 2 points = a line )
-Holding shift while doing this will result in 90 and 45 degree angles automatically.-If you drag while holding the click, you get curved lines (same deal, your still making anchor points, but the points dictate the direction/type of line)and this one is VERY IMPORTANT:
-Hold alt & click (on mac) (I THINK it's prolly cntrl + click on PC) on an anchor point, it kind of resets your line.You know how you'll be drawing a pen path then, all of a sudden: "OMFG WHY DID THE LINE CURVE OUT ALL CRAZY TO THE SIDE??!!!"
Well, the alt click trick ensures that you will be able to continue drawing as you want without madness.
The pen-tool line will act differently depending on your shape and the goal is draw as few anchor points as possible. The alt-click trick is crucial when you want your line to flow in a different direction suddenly, any sharp curves or angles.
remember to tweak your anchor points and handles as needed, you can easily refine your shapes this way.
and the pen tool shapes you make can combine nicely with the other tools like box and ellipse.
This probably sounds pretty basic and all, but once I knew these things, especially the last one, the pen tool and I became BFFs forever
pretty much all there is to it IMO. I use the thing always at work, so let me know if something doesn't make sense here. And I'll try to explain better.
so helpfully this helps somma ya'll pentool noobs.
There was some pen tool training sheet online I saw once, I'll try to find it......
einsam
Colbitzer
@ 3:32 PM Apr 17th