PHOTOSHOP ELEMENTS MAC DRAW AN ARROW MANUAL

Radius is the amount, in pixels, that the corners are rounded off. The Rounded Rectangle has one option of its own, though: Radius. Most of the Shape tools have similar options. It's available only for the Rectangle and Rounded Rectangle tools. You'll get crisper-looking edges with it turned on. This setting makes sure that the edge of your rectangle falls exactly on the edge of a pixel. It's useful when you know exactly where you want the shape but aren't sure exactly how big it needs to be. This setting lets you draw your shape from its center instead of from a corner. So if you enter a length of 2 and a height of 1, no matter where you drag, the shape is always twice as long as it is high. Use this setting if you know the proportions you want your rectangle to have, but not the exact size. Just enter the dimensions you want in inches, pixels, or centimeters. This setting makes Elements draw your shape the size you specify. To draw a square instead of a rectangle, click this radio button before you start, or just hold down the Shift key as you drag. How you drag determines the proportions of your shape. They both have Shape options settings in the Options bar for: UnconstrainedД¬hoose Unconstrained to draw a rectangle of whatever dimensions you want. The Rectangle and the Rounded Rectangle tools work pretty much the same way and are very popular for creating Web page buttons. The following sections describe all of the main shape categories and their special settings. Shapes don't have to touch or overlap to use this option. Then, everything you do is on the same layer. Tip: If you want to draw multiple shapes on one layer, click the вЂњAdd to ShapeвЂќ rectangle in the Options bar. Even with practice, it may take a couple of tries to get exactly the proportions you want. If you're drawing a fish, you can drag so that it's long and skinny or short and fat. The way you drag determines the proportions of your figure. Notice that how you drag the cursor affects the final appearance of the shape. To go back to drawing without a style, choose the rectangle with the diagonal red line through it. Just click the drop-down arrow on the right side of the Style box and choose the style you want from the pop-out palette. There's also an Options bar setting that lets you apply a layer style (see page 325) as you draw your shape. If you have special requirements, like a rectangle that's exactly 1' Г— 2', click the arrow next to the shape thumbnail for the Shape Options palette and enter the size of your shape. If you click the arrow to the right of the square, you get the Color Swatches palette instead (page 189). If you click the Options bar color square, you see the Color Picker (page 185). Adjust your settings in the Options barД¬hoose a color by clicking the color square in the Options bar or use the foreground color (page 184). (If you choose the Custom shape, you have many different shapes to choose from.) All the shapes, and their accompanying options, are described in the following sections. You can choose a rectangle, a rounded rectangle, an ellipse, a polygon, a line, or a custom shape. Select the kind of shape you want to drawД¬lick the shape you want in the Options bar. The little cartoon speech balloon of the Custom Shape tool is the icon Elements initially presents you with. The Shape tool is sometimes a little confusing to newcomers to Elements because the icon reflects the shape that's currently active-so you may see a rectangle, a polygon, or a line, for instance. You can add shapes to any file that you can open in Elements.Д¬lick the Shape tool in the Toolbox or press U. Turning yourself into an artist by using the Elements' Shape tool is easy. These objects look much more impressive once you gussy them up with Layer styles. This tool should appeal to anyone whose grade school masterpieces always seemed to get put up on the wall behind the piano somewhere.ДЇigure 11-20: Here are just a few of the shapes that you can draw with Elements, even if you flunked art class in elementary school. You can draw animals, plants, starbursts, picture frames all sorts of things, as shown in Figure 11-20. And not just simple shapes like circles and rectangles. Elements includes a Shape tool, which lets you draw geometrically perfect shapes, regardless of your artistic ability. Wow, so many brush options, and Adobe still isn't done-there's yet another way to draw things in Elements. We wish to thank Theresa Pulido and Dawn Mann for facilitating the permission to extract.

The excerpts chosen to be published on Indezine aim to show how easy it is to create graphic elements with shapes in Photoshop Elements 4.

PHOTOSHOP ELEMENTS MAC DRAW AN ARROW MANUAL

This book extract from Photoshop Elements 4: The Missing Manual is an Indezine exclusive with permission from O'Reilly Media, Inc.Д«arbara Brundage, the author of the book has been a member of Adobe's pre-release groups for Elements 3 and 4.

Photoshop elements mac draw an arrow