Fiddlers Green

Ok Guys;
this might be a lame question. I can not remember which tool to use in photoshop to draw straight lines, found pencil, and pen tools but they not helping. and I need to draw some parts for a couple of the repaints I am doing. Thanks in advance for any help given.

Jeff

I've been wondering the same thing. I tried to make a straight line on a Bell Long Ranger model and it was all sorts of crooked.

Well, I remember being able to have a little nav window pop up and it had various geometry and line options, and you could chose the thickness of the lines. as I get the wonkey lines as well using the pencil tool.

Jeff

The tool palette has a line tool - if you look for it you should be able to find it. In my version it's about the 5th tool down on the right - but if you hover the mouse over the tools you should see "Line Tool" when you reach it.

To draw a line you click at the start, hold down the left button and drag the mouse to the line's end, then let go the button.

For extremely fine lines (smaller than 1 pixel) I use the hexagonal tool to shave a line down to hair thickness, then copy and rotate the copies as needed - makes cleaner lines than the line tool.

Hope this helps -

The tool you want to use for straight lines is the brush tool (keyboard shortcut B in both Photoshop and Elements). The trick to making straight lines is to press the shift key.

As an example, click on the starting point of the line. Then press and hold the shift key while clicking on the end point of the line, in any angle. Voila, instant straight line.

To change the thickness of the line, either press the left [ or right ] to change before drawing it.

Yay! Thanks guys

ah, I see, Thanks guys for the help.
Jeff

I still can't find the line tool, lol, but I tried the paint brush thing and that works good. thanks for the tip. The version I am using is 5.5
Jeff

The line tool is actually several different tools on the same button: it may be showing on your toolbar as the rectangular, ellipe, custom shape or polygonal tool. You'll see a little arrowhead in the lower right of the button. If you right click that, you'll get choices, one of which is the line tool. There are a lot of buttons that control one or more tools--go explore.

_________________
-Rob-

Currently working on: see avatar

WooHoo! thanks,
I found it! LOL I just had to reset the tool bar and update it. Crazy things some times. Now back to modeling.
Thanks every one!!

Jeff

Try Gimp. Its free and has many, if not all, of the functions that photoshop has. And yes, its free!

Hmmm.. just might havrs to check it out, Thanks

Jeff

Also hawkman, make sure that you get a tutorial on the dif. functions. I will be getting one shortly

Will do, thanks for the heads up.

Jeff

Not to be a stick-in-the-mud, but I personally find that now that I've learned to use photoshop, I can't use GIMP.

I simply find "unlearning" the tricks and odd quirks of Photoshop so that I can then learn to use GIMP a bit too much for me. I keep wanting to do things the Photoshop Way, and when I can't I get frustrated.

But it you dont have photoshop then GIMP is The Way to go. I have messed around enough with it to know it will do 90% of what photoshop can do, and probably more once you've mastered it. And the price is certainly right!