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Custom Shapes

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About this lesson

Custom shapes can be very useful in a variety of contexts. They can be used for logos, or commonly used to design elements of a page or poster layout. They are great for symbols, arrows and signs as well. 

Exercise files

There are no related exercise files for this lesson, or we cannot provide them due to copyright issues.

Quick reference

Topic

How to use, create and save custom shapes.

When to use:

Custom shapes can be very useful in a variety of contexts. They can be used for logos, or commonly used as design elements of a page or poster layout. They are great for symbols, arrows and signs as well.

Instructions

To use existing shapes

  • Select the Shapes tool from the Tools menu
  • From the Options bar, use the drop-down menu to select the shape you want
  • Click on the ‘Gear' icon to add more shapes to your drop-down choices.

To create a custom ‘speech bubble’

  • Choose the Ellipse tool from the Tools bar.
  • Draw out an ellipse shape on your document.
  • Switch to the Pen tool
  • Choose ‘shape' option in the Options bar.
  • Choose ‘combined shapes’ option in the Options bar
  • Draw one side of the bubble connecter
  • Using the Option key (Mac) or ALT key (Windows), adjust the handles of the path to get desired shape
  • Change to Path Selection tool
  • Press ALT or Option and click the shape to duplicate, and place it on other side of bubble.
  • In Edit dropdown menu, choose Transform Path/Flip Horizontally

How save a custom shape for future use

  • Make sure that the new object is selected and that the path is visible by pressing Command-(Mac) or Control-(PC) Shift-'H'
  • Go to Edit dropdown menu and select ‘define custom shape’ option
  • Name shape and press OK

Tip

Shapes are vector objects so they can be as large or small as you want, with no loss of quality.

 

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  • 00:05 For those looking to create custom vector designs in PhotoShop,
  • 00:08 the Custom Shape tool, which can be found with your other shape tools,
  • 00:11 is a great place to start. Up on your Options bar you can choose from
  • 00:16 the many shapes that Adobe has provided for you to use.
  • 00:18 If this is your first time exploring custom shapes in PhotoShop,
  • 00:21 you may only see a few them in the shape picker. But if you click on the gear icon
  • 00:25 at the top right corner,
  • 00:27 you can choose to add a variety of packs that come with PhotoShop.
  • 00:30 Let's load them all in just to see what's available.
  • 00:33 When this popup comes up,
  • 00:34 choosing 'append' will add a new shape to the bottom of your current list.
  • 00:38 Or, pressing 'OK' will replace the current shapes.
  • 00:41 And here are all the shapes that you have access to in PhotoShop.
  • 00:45 Now for many users this may be more than enough. But for those who tend to create
  • 00:49 their own shapes for their website or designs,
  • 00:51 let me show you how you can create your own custom shapes in PhotoShop,
  • 00:55 and access them whenever you need it. For this example we're going to be creating a
  • 00:59 simple speech bubble,
  • 01:01 with two tails - perfect for comics when two people are talking.
  • 01:04 Starting out simple, switch over to your Eclipse tool and drag-out an
  • 01:08 oval anywhere in the document. Now that the oval is in place,
  • 01:11 let's switch to our Pen tool to create the first tail.
  • 01:15 When the Pen tool is selected
  • 01:16 make sure that the 'shape' option is chosen on your Options bar,
  • 01:19 and then over to the right, choose the 'combine shapes' option to ensure that the
  • 01:23 final result is one shape instead of three.
  • 01:24 Place your first point somewhere inside the oval.
  • 01:29 And then when you click to make the second point drag your mouse to the left,
  • 01:33 to create a curved path.
  • 01:34 Now if you were to simply click back inside the oval you're going to be left
  • 01:38 with a pretty skewed shape. To work around this, hold
  • 01:41 down your Option key on the Mac
  • 01:43 or the ALT key in Windows, and drag the curved point back toward the anchor point.
  • 01:47 This will help limit the big loop curve that we saw a moment ago.
  • 01:51 Now we can go ahead and click and drag back inside the oval
  • 01:55 to create the last curve. With that tail complete, a simple duplication should do
  • 02:00 the trick for the second one.
  • 02:01 On your Tools bar, grab the 'path selection' tool,
  • 02:04 and click on the tail that we just created. The 'path selection' tool allows us to
  • 02:09 select a different path
  • 02:10 that makes up the overall shape. You should see the path in the anchor points
  • 02:14 around the tail.
  • 02:15 With it selected, just like you would duplicate the standard layer,
  • 02:18 hold down your ALT or Option key and drag it to the right.
  • 02:21 You can also flip it as well. Under the Edit menu
  • 02:25 you're going to see a Transformed Path submenu; let's go ahead and flip it
  • 02:28 horizontally.
  • 02:29 and place it on the right, towards the top. Perfect!
  • 02:32 If at any point you want to hide or show your past, pressing 'Command- or Control-
  • 02:36 Shift and 'H'' will do exactly that. So now we have a new custom shape completed.
  • 02:42 How do we save it for future use? Back under the Edit menu you may have noticed
  • 02:46 the 'define
  • 02:47 custom shape' option, however, it may be greyed out at times.
  • 02:50 In order for this option to become available, you must have a shape layer
  • 02:54 active, which we do, but you also need to have the paths visible.
  • 02:58 A moment ago we use the 'Command- or Control-Shift-'H'' shortcut to hide the
  • 03:02 path.
  • 03:03 Using that same shortcut will reveal our path once again,
  • 03:06 and will also allow us to select the 'define custom shape' option.
  • 03:10 When the pop-up comes up, give your shape a name and press OK.
  • 03:14 Now at any point in the future, you can choose your custom shaped tool
  • 03:18 and your newly created shape will be available for you to use.
  • 03:21 And because shape layers are vectors, you can drag the shape out as big or as
  • 03:24 small as you need it.
  • 03:25 And that is how you can create your own custom shapes in PhotoShop.

Lesson notes are only available for subscribers.

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