How to draw a straight line in Photoshop. Drawing abstract lines in Photoshop

20.04.2019
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Good day, dear readers of my blog. It would seem, what does it cost to draw a straight line in Photoshop? Hold down Shift and there you go. Nevertheless, this can be done in as many as three ways. Everyone's result will be different.

In this article you will learn three ways to draw a straight line in Photoshop. Which filter to use to create a wave. How to do this with the help of another interesting instrument. I'll show you how to achieve a dotted line and draw at a certain angle.

A lot of information awaits you. Shall we get started?

Line Tool

First, I'll show you how to use a tool that's designed to create straight lines. In this place you can have a rectangle, oval, ellipse or polygon. Just hold down the left mouse button for a few seconds to open a menu with additional tools.

First things first. One of the most important parameters is thickness. Thanks to the line, you can even draw rectangles. You just need to make it fatter.

Next comes “Fill” and “Stroke”. Click on the color block to the left of the inscriptions and select a shade. If you want to make a stroke, enter its width. Now, my screenshot shows the option without it. The no color icon looks like this. Gray line crossed out in red.

You can see the settings and the result in this screenshot. It's not very visible, but the thickness here is 30 pixels. On big picture 30 pixels may look like a modest stripe. Everything needs to be adjusted to your own dimensions.

This is what the line will look like if you select red for the stroke color.

The next button will allow you to create a dotted stroke.

If you reduce the thickness and remove the fill, you will just get a dotted line.

Here you can align the stroke to the inner edge, outer edge, or center of your outline.

And round the corners. True, it will not be so noticeable.

If you press Shift while you are drawing a line, Photoshop will automatically create straight line. Horizontal or vertical. Depending on where you are taking her.

If you need a line at a certain angle, then the easiest way is to look at what the information window shows and adjust it manually, pointing it in a certain direction.

Well, now I’ll show you another one.

Brush Tool

I drew these rectangles using lines drawn with a brush.

Choose the type and size that suits your brush line.

Place a dot at the expected beginning of the line, hold down Shift and left-click where the strip should end.

There are two lines in front of you. The yellow one was painted using the Line tool, and the purple one was painted with a brush.

How to make a wave

No matter what tool you use, the easiest way to create a wavy line is to use a filter. Go to this category, find “Distortion” and select “Wave”.

Based on the preview picture, you will quickly understand what's what and how to set it up. The amplitude should be approximately the same. If it doesn’t work, you can just click on “Randomize” until a suitable one appears.

The last applied filter is always quickly accessible. I apply it to the layer with the yellow stripe drawn with the tool.

This is the result I got. As you can see, it is different.

Pen Tool

To be honest, I still can’t use a pen professionally. I know that you can draw anything with it: smoothly, quickly, fun and cool, but it takes me a lot of time and the result is not always at the level I expected. And yet I can even draw straight lines with a pen. It's worse with curves, but I'll try. I select “Feather”.

I put a dot, then a second one. While I haven't released the mouse button, I adjust the smoothness.

I do the same thing with each new point.

After all the manipulations are completed, right-click and select “Stroke outline” from the menu that appears.

You can choose several tools: pencil, brush, stamp, pattern, and so on. Now let this one be a brush.

I press the right mouse button again and select “Delete outline”.

This is the result I got.

Well, don’t forget that you can always use your collage making skills. Read the article about how to take a line from any picture and insert it into your image.

If you want to learn how to professionally use the pen and other tools found in Photoshop. I can offer you a course " Photoshop for beginners in video format ».

Lessons created by professionals will teach you everything you need to know about this program. You will save a lot of time searching for answers to this or that question. Ideas on how to complete the task will spontaneously appear in your head.


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There is a job for everyone, and you can do what you really like and bring good money. Read the article about or. Stop inventing tasks for yourself, let someone else pay money for your time.

Don't know where to start? Take the course Commercial Web Design Basics ". Try a few free lessons, this will help you understand yourself and understand whether you are ready to explore new horizons.


An online course with the support of the author is a reliable investment in your future profession.

OK it's all over Now. It's up to you. Decide when you are ready and start conquering new heights. If you liked this article, subscribe to the newsletter and take one step closer to your cherished goal every day.

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I wish you good luck. See you again.

The Photoshop graphics editor is rightly considered a fairly complex program. He has a large number of tools, and therefore is able to perform many tasks. Well, in order to understand all its nuances, you need to make every effort, spend a lot of time and, of course, have a great desire, otherwise nothing will work out.

Of course, not all teams are within the capabilities of a beginner, for example, but this is only at first. But you have to start somewhere! I suggest starting with a simple, but at the same time very necessary lesson: how to draw a straight line in Photoshop. So, let's figure it out.

Brush and Pencil tools

There are several ways to draw a regular straight line in Photoshop, it all depends solely on the user’s preferences. By the way, there are also several ways. To begin with, I would like to introduce you to the tools that are not the most obvious for these purposes: “Brush” and “Pencil”.

Please note that if you hold down the key before drawing, the line will not turn out strictly straight, so do not forget to perform this simple action.

Line Tool

This method of creating a straight line is perhaps very obvious and lies on the surface, and, nevertheless, beginners may not know about it. The point is that this tool is part of a group of others called by the U button on the keyboard. You can also call it manually; to do this, on the vertical Panel, click on the “Rectangle” button with the right mouse button. A small menu will appear with a list of possible tools, including the one we need – “Line”.

Click on it, then adjust the header with customizable parameters, for example, you can adjust the line thickness. Now let's start drawing: to do this, simply pull the computer mouse to the side while holding its left button. If you clamp in parallel, you will get a vertical or horizontal line. Also, if you hold down the same key and drag a line along an inclined line, the line will accordingly be inclined at an angle of 45 degrees.

That's all science, as you can see, absolutely nothing complicated! Patience, a little practice, and you will succeed.


Parallel lines and a grid are elements that bring order and rigid structure to a design solution. Lines set the direction for the eye as it fleetingly glides across the picture, emphasizing the surfaces, giving volume to the image. Light shading instead of filling creates the effect of weightlessness and airiness of the object.


It is easier to create parallel lines, a grid of rectangular cells, and a lattice in vector graphics programs such as Adobe Illustrator, for example. You can download a suitable texture or ready-made clipart.

But there is not always time to look for the right textures. Drawing a straight line is easy - draw with any drawing tool while holding down the Shift key. It's difficult to draw multiple lines equally spaced to create a grid, for example. But to solve the problem of creating parallel lines It's not at all difficult in Photoshop.

1 way.

The fastest way to create parallel lines is to use styles.

Draw a straight line with the Pensil tool (to make the line straight, hold down the Shft key).

Photoshop's built-in styles include Dotted Strokes styles. Select these styles using the Styles palette menu: Window > Styles.

From the style sets, choose the White 1pt 2pt-Spaced Dotted No Fill style or another one if you prefer.

Let's get a line of points.

This line needs to be stretched in width and obtained from the points of the strip. But if you do this right now, you will get a rectangle with a dotted outline. Here's a simple trick: create a new empty layer above the dotted line layer and merge the two layers (select these layers in the Layers panel and do the Merge command).

After that, simply stretch the line wider with the command Edit (Editing)>Transform (Transform).

If you create a new layer above the layer with lines, fill this layer with a gradient fill and apply the menu command from the layers panel Create Clipping Mask to it, you will get this rainbow stripe.

And using the Edit > Transform > Warp command allows you to get interesting effects.

Method 2.

Parallel lines can be created using gradients. The disadvantage of this method is significant - you must first create a gradient using the gradient editor. If you don’t know anything about working with the gradient editor, go here:

The advantage of this method is that, firstly, you can create a striped gradient, save it and use it always, secondly, you can create multi-colored gradients, gradients with blurry or clear transitions from the line color to the background, you can create double, triple lines with different spaces between them. Or download ready-made ones or

Creating a gradient to draw parallel lines is easy. Open the gradient editor and add color markers in the desired positions (just click the mouse in in the right places, color and distance are specified in the appropriate fields.). The Location field specifies the marker indentation in % from the left edge; the distance between markers is the distance between lines.

Small markers next to the color marker determine how blurry the line is. Try moving them closer to the line and see the result.


Handles above the gradient bar control the transparency of the gradient areas. White markers indicate transparent areas (Opacity is 0). This gradient is convenient for drawing on a ready-made background:

An example of using this gradient:

And don’t forget that there are different gradients - diamond-shaped, radial, mirror, which allows you to create different shapes with one easy movement:

3 way.

To begin, draw one line on a new layer.

Go to the Actions palette, create new operation(Line, for example), click the record button and do simple steps: Duplicate the line layer and move it up or down to the desired distance. The job is done, click the Stop recording button. It should look something like this:

After that, press the triangular Play recording button as many times as you need lines.

As a result, the image has many layers with lines. If you are happy with the result, combine the layers with lines into one layer.

Duplicating the lines layer and then rotating the duplicate at right angles or any other angle makes it easy to create a mesh.

And applying styles - effects:

Lines, as well as others geometric elements, are an integral part of the work of a Photoshop master. Lines are used to create grids, contours, and segments. various shapes, skeletons of complex objects are built.

Today's article will be entirely devoted to how you can create lines in Photoshop.

As we know from the school geometry course, lines can be straight, broken and curved.

Straight

To create a straight line in Photoshop, there are several options using various tools. All the main construction methods are given in one of the existing lessons.

Therefore, we will not linger in this section, but will immediately move on to the next one.

Broken

A polyline consists of several straight segments, and can be closed, forming a polygon. Based on this, there are a couple of ways to build it.

  1. Unclosed polyline

  • Closed polyline
  • As we said earlier, such a line is a polygon. There are two ways to construct polygons - using the appropriate tool from the group "Figure", or by creating a selection free form followed by a stroke.

    • Figure.

      When applying this method, we will obtain a geometric figure with equal angles and sides.

      To obtain a line (contour) directly, you need to adjust the stroke, called "Stroke". In our case it will be a solid stroke given size and colors.

      After disabling the fill

      we will get the required result.

      Such a figure can be deformed and rotated using the same "Free Transformation".

    • Straight line lasso.

      Using this tool you can build polygons of any configuration. After placing several points, a selected area is created.

      This selection needs to be circled, for which there is a corresponding function that is called by pressing PKM on the canvas.

      In the settings you can choose the color, size and position of the stroke.

    Curve

    Curves have the same parameters as broken lines, that is, they can be closed or open. You can draw a curved line in several ways: with tools "Feather" And "Lasso" using shapes or selections.

    1. Unclosed
    2. Such a line can only be drawn "Per"(with a contour outline), or “by hand”. In the first case, the lesson, the link to which is above, will help us, and in the second, only a steady hand.

    3. Closed
    • Lasso.

      This tool allows you to draw closed curves of any shape (segments). Lasso creates a selection, which, to obtain a line, must be outlined in a known way.

    • Oval area.

      In this case, the result of our actions will be a circle of regular or elliptical shape.

      To deform it, it is enough to call "Free Transform" (CTRL+T) and, after pressing PKM, select the appropriate additional function.

      On the grid that appears, we will see markers, by pulling which you can achieve the desired result.

      It is worth noting that in this case the effect also extends to the line thickness.

    • Figure.

      Let's use the tool "Ellipse" and, using the settings described above (as for a polygon), create a circle.

      After deformation we get the following result:

      As you can see, the line thickness remained unchanged.

    This concludes the lesson on creating lines in Photoshop. We learned how to create straight, broken and curved lines different ways using various program tools.

    These skills should not be neglected, since they are the ones that help build geometric figures, contours, various meshes and frames in Photoshop.


    In this tutorial I will give 3 simple examples, how to draw curved line in Photoshop. Let's get started.

    Method number 1. Circle.

    First, draw a regular circle, using the tool oval region. With this tool it is easy to draw a circle in this way: with the tool selected, change the tool style from "Ordinary" on "Specified Size" and just set the same size for the height and width of the circle. Or you can do all the operations not with a circle, but with an ellipse. Then just click on the sheet with the mouse, and you will have a selection of the specified size. After that, right-click on the selected area and select the item from the menu Stroke. In the window that appears, select the color and size of the brush. Next, just press on the keyboard "Ctrl" + "D" and your selection will disappear.

    Now create another layer on top of the circle. And in a new layer, draw a circle, but without a stroke.

    Now just fill inside the selected area with the same color as the background and press the keys "Ctrl" + "D" to remove selection.

    Method number 2. Rectangle.

    First, draw a rectangular area, stroke, but do not remove the selection yet (how to do this is described in method No. 1).

    Then go to the menu "Filter" (Filter) - "Plastic" (liquify). Or press the keyboard shortcut "Shift" + "Ctrl" + "X".

    And bend your shape, then press OK. After that, it remains only to remove the selection and remove unnecessary details with an eraser.

    Method No. 3. Feather.

    Perhaps the easiest way is the tool "Feather". Many do not understand what this tool is for just because they do not know how to use it. Everything is simple here. Choosing a tool "Feather", first style it "Contour" (Paths). Then on the sheet, simply put a point with this tool. Release the mouse button and place a second point on the other side, but this time, without releasing the mouse button, drag and you will see how you have the outline of a curved line.

    After that, it remains only to stroke the contour, as in the first method with a circle, and also right-click on the contour, select "Delete Outline".

    In this way it is very convenient to draw wavy lines.

    Wavy lines It is more convenient to draw with a pen with an anchor. To do this, you need to put two points on the page with a pen, which will automatically be connected by a line. And then, pulling the middle of this line, bend the line with the same pen.



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