Shape Tool Explained! | Photoshop tutorial

today we will talk about the shape tool in Photoshop so let's start hi guys my name is nemesis Coolidge and welcome to another fun episode today we will talk about the shape tool in Photoshop and how to create your own custom shapes so let's jump straight in Photoshop and let's have fun alright guys we will start with this blank piece of paper and we will start by selecting our shape tool it's this tool right here or if you're using keyboard shortcut you can press you on a keyboard right let's select and the shape tool and if you press and hold on this tool you will see a lot of other options first one it's a rectangle tool then rounded rectangle tool del then ellipse tool polygon tool line tool and custom shape tool we will go through all of those tools and I will explain you how to use them so let's go to the first one its rectangle tool and select that one right at the top of the Photoshop here you have some options first you have shape here the drop down menu where we have shaped path and pixels first we will use a shape and will create rectangular shape then you have a fill that means the color of that rectangle or the shape you want to create we can choose any color we want for example red one then we have a stroke I will show in a moment what it what the stroke is and this is the thickness of the stroke and then we have some other options that I will show in a moment first let's press and click to draw some custom shapes shape as you can see here I'm drawing some custom rectangle shape if I want to draw a perfect square shape I will just press and hold Shift key like so and then I will draw the perfect square shape but I don't know choose the square now use some kind of rectangle like so and if I really small button then you will see that we have our first custom shape fill it's red this is the red color this rectangular shape it's filled with red stroke it's crossed that means that there is no color applied and we can choose any color we want for example we can use this green one I don't know and not yellow one but the green one and you cannot see right now because it's too team it's only one pixel wide and this is one pixel we can make it bigger this number here represent the thickness of that stroke line around our rectangle right and we can make it bigger or smaller or you can go here to drop down menu and just make it bigger or smaller I like to go here where the stroke letters are and just in a real time change Det stroke size all right and we can choose the stroke size if you don't want to have stroke you can go always here and cross it so that means that no color is applied but I will use some green color and the good thing here it's that anytime in the process you can go and change all settings you can make this rectangle smaller or bigger without losing the quality you can go or isn't change the color of that or stroke or anything that you want you can always manipulate that except if you go right here to the layers and say right right click and then rasterize layer' then you'll have just an ordinary pixelate bitmap so that means that this will be just if you use the brush tool and just draw this rectangle and fill it with some color and that's it if you make it bigger you will lose the quality quality and so on let's undo this few times like so and now see this small icon here that means that this is now in a vector shape and this is a shape and you can manipulate with that whatever you want if I press control command T I can make this bigger or smaller as you can see if I want to make it bigger smaller from the center just press and hold Alt key by holding your shift key I'm holding the shift key to constrain the proportions if I for example want to release the shift key then I as you can see I'm still holding an alt key or option key on a Mac that means that I'm on I'm change the size right from the center here if I release the alt or option key I will change the size from this corner right and we can always make it smaller or make bigger it will not affect to the quality of this shape okay that's first thing now let's go back to our shape tool and let's go to this next option where this line it's if you press and click on that you have some other options here first is the line second aids some how to say those are gods those are some you see I don't know the English word for this alliance right and you can apply this kind of shape for a stroke that's really nice and what is nice too you can go here two more options and you have this one this menu and you can change the dash space and the gap space this is - yeah - and the gap space here and you can for example put maybe two four four - and maybe one for a gap it will have something like like so if you put maybe four four gap you will have a bigger gaps around between those dashes here and so on and so on you can experiment you can add more dashes for example you can add one more - with the size of - and it's something like so or not our - with size of four for example or three and you will have some other interesting shapes but I will use maybe four and two and this is nice alright if I want I can go here or here and change two dots and now we have nice dots all around this and of course we can change the gap maybe for now there is a bigger gap between the dots and so on and so on you can play with that depends of the purpose of your shape on the screen right here what is really nice here it's this align option right here you choose how to align those dots or lines or dashes all right depends what you want now it's inside that means that those dots as you can see are from the inside of this main line here right if we put the center now those dots will be on that line it will be centered on this line around right and if we put outside maybe you cannot see now because of the color let's let's say okay let's shade the colored red right now you can see those dots are outside of this line the rectangular shape so if you want to change this just go here choose options or you can go here to a line and just put it this is default inside centered or outside depends of course again of your preference right that's this options right we shot this option right here all right the next thing it's just the width and height of the rectangle or the shape you want to draw right you can choose to change the weight or the height here and if you press and click on this chain icon here we will link add width and height and you can move them all together like you're using a shift key and transform it right and another really nice options option it's this one right here let's hide this right you have the property panel it's here all the time and it has all those options from here and I will hide it for now and let me show you this option here it's first one its new layer what does that mean well anytime I choose to create a new shape to draw a new shape on screen it will create that new shape on a separate layer as you can see if I draw a new shape it will create a new layer right here and another shape it will create a new layer for that shape and so on and so on let's just obtain the keyboard let's undo this right and let's go to next option next it's combined shapes right and if I want to combine shapes I will click on this one let's make this smaller right what combine shapes means means like whenever I want to create a new shape on a screen like so it will not create a new layer for that shape actually it will create the shape on the same layer but it will combine with this shape now this represent one shape actually and if I move this shape or if I draw another one right here as you can see now it will combine this one and this one will become one and if I use here pad selection tool and move any of those three shapes for example this one I will combine all those shapes into one but with that difference then this is this is non-destructive way that that means that you can always select any of those shapes and move it to change the I don't know to change that overall shape that you want to create maybe you want to create some floor plan for your building or your house or your room or I don't know anything and this is nice - nice way to draw that right something like so you can always move any of those rectangle that you draw and if you want to finalize this to make this only one shape you can just go right here and right click and rasterize then you will have a bitmap but you can play with that too if you don't want to have separate shapes on one layer alright then the next option right here is let's select any of these right it's subtract from shape that means that anything this is new shape and if I move that shape inside another shape this part that overlaps with a new shape will be subtracted and it will not be shown on the screen so if I move this shape in the center here it will be a hole in because it's subtracted right that's really nice and handy option if you want to draw some holes here or to create some something like so or something like so I don't know anything you want you can be really creative depends on the project you're working on but that's another option all right let's go to third actually fourth option its intersect shaped areas what does what does it mean let's let me show it means that the shape will be only shown where that shape intersect or overlapped with another shape so here this big rectangle and this small one are intersecting overlapping and this only the overlapped part it's shown as a shape as here if we intersect all three you can see only where those three are intersect the shape will be shown if I move this out this small part if I move all the way out nothing it's shown right here because there is no overlapping now this is overlap and only this small portion it's shown all right now let's go to the final last option here it's exclude overlapping shapes what does this mean right let me show like so anything that it's overlapping will not be shown right like so it's opposite of the previous option everything that it's overlapping it's excluded from shape right that's really nice and that's all options that you have right here okay let's use combine shapes and create something like this all right guys we have another interesting and useful option and that's the align option here for the shape so let me show how this works right if you use this path selection tool and select everything here all those three shapes that we created as combined shapes and for example you for some reason you want to align them for example on the left side here you can go to this end align left' edges and all three shapes will be aligned on this left edges the left edge or horizontal Center than it will be right here it's same like a text aligning - all right edges it's right here or top edges it will be all here bottom vertical and so on and so on really nice option here it's if you want to align this to not just the shapes but to canvas here if you want to align canvas just press here line to canvas option and then you can do the same select everything and for example I line to the left side it will everything will go to the left side of that canvas and that's how you can use let's undo this this line option another interesting thing it's bring shape to front or to back it's for example if you have a lot of shapes stacked one in front of another and you have different kind of colors so you want to bring one shape or another for example this one you want to bring to the front and you will click this it will be bring to a fourth front or just the one step forward and so on it's all actually I rarely use this but it's really really handy option and especially in if you use Adobe Illustrator it's you're familiar with that it's really handy option alright that's about the first rectangular shape and one more thing that I didn't mention here I will just delete this one okay yes I will delete everything right and I will just create a new rectangle shape just to show you you have another great option let's choose for example blue and make it wider something like so you have this option right here in a properties panel some corners here drawn and if you if you yeah if you click this chain icon all corners will change in the same way because they are constrained right now let's change the roundness of those corners you can see really handy option you can change the roundness of those corners for example you in for some other reasons you want to change only one corner of those four you can uncheck this unlink this and change only one corner maybe this one and maybe here this left one and you have some interesting custom shape maybe you don't like this you will just want this inside part that's cool or if you want to disrobe to be a black that's really cool too alright and let me show you another trick here if you wondered we have opacity and fill options and sometimes they're usually in in most cases they're doing the same thing changing the opacity overall opacity of the object that sits on the paper here on screen and what I want to show you here in this case if you change the opacity it will do right that it will change the opacity of this shape but if you decrease the fill option here here it will just change the opacity of the field in this case of this red color so let me show the stroke will stay intact the fill it's zero fill it's 42 or 100 and that's really handy and great option for this shaped tool right let's delete this shape and let's go to the next one it's rounded rectangular tool it's the same thing that I show you right if you wanted to go if you draw this we will have rectangle but with the rounded corners and of course you can go right here and change if you link it to change everything in the same time and that's the only difference between and rectangle and rounded rectangle tool right next one it's ellipse tool let's delete this one and we can draw some ellipse right here okay and if you want to draw a perfect circle is the same like with the square just press and hold shift on a keyboard and you will draw a perfect circle and that's it you can add again this stroke make bigger smore one more thing you can have a stroke in one color you can have a stroke in gradient or this pattern if you want to fill the stroke with a pattern you can just choose this last option right here if you want to choose with a gradient all right you can change the gradient angle you can change the gradient type may be reflected like so then you can change the scale of that see anything that you want you can create really really interesting result with a gradient to have fun experiment with all those options that I showing you today and practice and you will really really be able to achieve great results with that right that's with gradient you can use the gradient here with the fill option to to create something funny and interesting you can create your own gradient or use anything that it's pretty fine right here and you have really lot of gradients in Photoshop you can just lot gradients here they're they're really a lot of predefined Brady's right and let me show you an arc that's with the that that was ellipse tool and you can create different kind of ellipse right something like so or you can create circles by holding shift key and that's really great so let's delete all of these shapes this one too and let's go to polygon tool polygon tool it's really handy and nice though right you have the same options like before except we have now the sides option extra option all right let's use five for side maybe and we will have some things like soft everything else it's completely the same let's choose black and make it like this and we will make some nice five side polygons that's really really nice right if you want to triangle you will have course three only sides for triangle like so and if you press and hold shift and rotate you will rotate this triangle in sum I think it's in a 45 degrees yes and you can let go whenever you want you can always choose any of those shapes with this path selection tool maybe I want this one and then go back here and I want to change okay I didn't choose that my knife I was on a separate layer I want here to change the color of that one right and we can do that too because now I used two layers to create those triangles and those five and go shape right let's delete that and let's go here maybe one again let me show you five handles right let's do something like so and let me show another trick we have this gear option here and we have something that it's called smooth corners and now if I check the smooth corners I have the same five five handle a shape but with smooth corners and it's really nice I have smooth corners here and I if I check a star and uncheck the smooth corner I will have star because now instead or if I want a six I don't need five five one six I will have six point star now it's a little bit a different photoshop it's using a different algorithm to draw those corners it's go it goes first inside then outside and it's the way how it creates star it's really handy option right if you want maybe eight point star can choose something like that and create the star or you can go and create smooth in deaths and indents and I'll show this is something like so actually yeah this is really fun fun way to create some custom shapes if you want to tree you will have something like this and you can create some other fun fun shapes right and that's how you can manipulate with those options right here right now let's jump to a line tool and how the line tool works right it's here inside that shape tool you have a line tool and if you choose a color for a line maybe yeah maybe let's leave the red one and we don't find a stroke for this we don't want a stroke or ease right and we create a line we will have just one red line and another red line and because we are here on a new layer option every line that we create right right here it will be on a new layer let's delete all of this and let's create another line of course if you choose combine shapes then you will have everything on one layer sometimes it's handy to have everything on one layer sometime it's really a nice to have everything on a separate layer again depends of the the type of project you're doing let's delete everything here okay all of this and let's create a new line like so and we have some other options options here we have course stroke color we can choose the blue for example and we will have just the blue color because the stroke it's too big now if I if I go right here you will see the line it's red and if I change the stroke pixel size to maybe 2 or 1 because this is so tiny it will be overwhelmed with the stroke and we will have the blue line but if you want to make the line thicker we can go right here wait and choose the weight of the line and maybe I wanted like to be at 13 pixels let's just like the line maybe that's great in your life right now it's this weight it's 16 pixels now it's 36 pixels and we can now have this stroke even wider bigger and we'll have something like so and everything else it's completely the same like the previous shapes that I've shown you right guys now let me show you the path and pixels option here with the shape tool let's do that if you choose rectangle tool for example and don't wanna shape just wanna path and create something like this you will create a pet out of this shape and it's the it's completely the same if you use the pen tool right and just created something like so some nice pad it's absolutely the same and then you can play with this with this pad you can change you can of course change the roundness of that and anything that we did with the previous in the previous examples and you can then turn this pattern so selection or fill this pet or do anything that you want like you're using pen tool if you don't know how to use the pen tool I have a great tutorial about that right here right this is Pat alright let's you have here some options you can make a mask out of that you can create shape out of that and if you create shape it will be like we use the shape here and create the shape it's completely its act completely same procedure if if you are using a pen tool right now let me show you how to use a pixels option here in the shape tool so to do that we can we need to choose from a pad pixels and then we cannot draw here on the screen why because in a pixel mode the this shape tool it's behaving like a pen tool we need to create a new layer to draw on that then we have an option to draw and we need to choose the color it's exactly the same like with the brush tool so we will choose some red color and then create some custom shape and that shape will be in a pixel mode not in a vector mode its pixel based shape and we can then just move it like we do something then that we draw with a brush and so on and so on even if we create maybe some triangle here right here we cannot move any of those triangles separately this is just a new shape that it's pixel based shape it's not vector based shape and that's it it's the same if you use the brush here and just click and create a triangle and fill it like so and that's completely the same this is the easy way to draw a triangle and with the brush you can just brush anything like so and this is destructive way we cannot separate those shapes one from another right that's the pixel based shapes so again we have shape tool we have a petal and pixels here okay and now let me show you the last step here let's delete everything here the last one it's custom shape tool this is really funny because you have a lot of predefined custom shapes here and if you don't see all these just go here to the gear icon and select all and press ok yes oops no because I already have it and we will have all of those custom shapes for example you can use cat and just draw a cat with the shift you will constrain the proportion and everything it's completely the same like you use with previous examples that I show you in this tutorial right and we now have a really nice silhouette of a cat you can apply you can add some strokes if you want or change the color of the cat and so on and so on so let me show now if I delete this cat and here let's go with this picture and now for example I want to add some birds here or some I don't know maybe dog or anything that I want from a custom shape here I can choose the photo of bird right and I can just draw more bird right here I don't want to be red I want to be black ok and now let me see I have really nice blur I can duplicate it or make another one bigger or smaller you can duplicate that with control Montreuil and just duplicate this rotate it just normally when like you're using some art tools and this is really nice for example you want to add dog here just choose the dog right here and maybe put him to stand right here like so and now we have our dog standing right here on the left right and that's really nice way how you can use a custom shape tool and not only how you can use the custom shape tool in Photoshop to be a little bit more creative I will show really quickly right now let's delete all of this let's hide this and let's create a background with a solid color layer and now let's use maybe bluish or something like this double-click on that and I want to use a gradient maybe this reflected by not let me see something like so and now I want to use this photo and let's put this photo out of this group okay let's go out please okay and now I want to combine this photo with a custom shape tools in Photoshop or something that is not custom a be will triangle right and how to do that first I want to use this polygon tool and I will choose 3/4 triangle or you can choose 4 5 6 I know anything that you want just be creative and I will first create first triangle and I will rotate it like so to be like a big play button right and I will put it right here then I will create a few small ones ok and I want every bad to be a separate layer this one maybe right here this is completely custom you can do anything that you want ok let me see something like so and if you hold press and hold the space bar I can move this something like so why not then create a new one right here you don't need to create this kind of shape at all I just want to show what you can do with this you see this shape tool in Photoshop ok something looks so maybe maybe one right here and so on and so on you got the idea you can really be creative with this and oops and now let me show and now if I select first one and the last one and right click and say merge shapes it's here I have everything on one layer and I will put this layer at the top and just clip it to the shape layer to clip the layer to another layer just press and hold alt or option key and click between those two layers right and now as you can see we have our photo applied and B and it's visible only where this custom shape is visible okay and that's one way how you can use a custom shape tool in Photoshop you can use it on completely other different ways you can add shadow right here or you can create another different kind of custom shape maybe I want to frame this maybe want to use the rectangle tool and just create actually square and you want to frame to frame this photo in in this square that's nice or you don't maybe want like this maybe you want to rotate it just press control Manti and rotate it maybe something like so whoops now cancel it sorry rotate it something like this and yes and now you have this photo frame in this custom shape maybe you want to add add another shape duplicated make it bigger like so and put it about this layer let's bring back this okay let's put it about this layer and you want to change the fill because you don't want to feel to be visible and you want actually to add a stroke maybe a white color right and you want the stroke to be bigger something like so and you have really nice shape you can maybe change this dash or dots right and apply all of these settings that we have do today and you can add some other shapes around it and so on and so on you can really play a lot with this custom shape store and the last thing that I want to show is how to create your own custom shape and that's really easy you can just use a pen tool right here and create any kind of shape that you want for example this one I don't know why I'm creating this one but this is our custom shape you can create sunglasses you can create I don't know some wheels or anything that you want you can use some maybe references from internet some silhouettes and just trace that and create some interesting custom shape and I want to turn this into a custom shape just right click and say define custom shape and just name this shape and I'll just leave it shape one because I'm related later and press ok now we can delete this and we can go here to custom shape tool and go right here all the way to the button and we will have our custom shape and we can draw things with that custom shape anything that you want right and you can play with that and create your own artwork alright guys that's it for today I hope that you like this tutorial and that you learn something new out of it there are a lot of new features here for you maybe maybe a lot of you are familiar with the shape tool but it's really useful and not so often used tool in Photoshop it's really powerful and you can achieve a lot of great and interesting result with that shape tool so practice experiment have fun and if you have any questions regarding to this episode please leave them in the comments below I will be glad to answer them so see you next week in the next fun episode bye bye

Channel: Nemanja Sekulic

Views: 285,129

Keywords: Shape tool, Shape tool in Photoshop, Custom shape, Custom shapes, tool, Tutorial, Photoshop, Photoshop tutorial, rectangular shape tool, Create custom shape, How to use shape tool, Nemanja Sekulic, What is shape tool, easy to learn, Shape tool explained, explained

Id: GjwnLLCTx8o

Length: 34min 41sec (2081 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 28 2017