Befriending the Pen Tool

They say that pen is mightier than the sword, and indeed, the Pen Tool is a powerful blade -- easily one of Photoshop's most difficult tools to use, which is why it merits giving it a bit of an introduction before you use it freeform.

Open up a new image, giving it workable dimensions (800 width by 600 height should be enough), and strike up your Pen tool by selecting it from the tool bar (or by pressing P).

We've provided a cheat sheet to give you a thorough understanding of what each option in the top navigation bar does for the Pen tool. Click on the image to enlarge it.

Download the cheat sheet if need be and try your hand at making your own shapes and curves. Keep in mind that maneuvering your pen tool can seem incredibly challenging at times. As long as you’ve got the basics down, it should be a fairly simple attempt. The trick is in figuring out how to create subpaths, which is the point at which the path starts.

To create a curve, start by clicking anywhere in your document, then click and hold elsewhere on your blank palette. Slowly drag the mouse in any direction to create an anchor point.

The bullet points now illustrate where your curve points are, which further enhance the current curve. To move these curve points, hold ALT and drag. To move the anchor point or the subpath, hold CTRL. Refer to the image below to distinguish between the subpath, an anchor point, and a curve point.

Photoshop has a great built-in tutorial on how to use the pen tool. Hit F1 to do a search in the how-to guide and keep practicing!

Extracting Images Using the Pen Tool

Using what you've just learned about the Pen Tool, we're going to trace our object, extract it, and save it as a new image.

Original Image: 

1.    Open up your image of choice. If this is your first time cutting out an object, we suggest choosing a photo that does not contain an elaborate background.

2.    Select the Pen tool to begin tracing the image. Start at a decent anchor point and make a path around your image, but be precise. When you’re finished tracing, make sure the lines are all connected.

3.    To make a selection out of your path, right click and select Make Selection, making sure Anti-Aliased is selected and Feathering is set to zero.

Copy it by using the Ctrl + C shortcut. Then, go to File – New, select OK and paste your image with Ctrl + V.

The window at the top left is your extracted object.

Final result:

 

With your vector image now its own entity, you can edit the object however you please. Here are a few examples of what you can do with your image from the Blending Options menu, which you can access by right-clicking on the layer.

You can create a border around your object with the Stroke option.

 

Or, you could do a pattern overlay. The choice is yours!

Quick Tip: You can use this same extraction technique in Adobe Image Ready to export objects from an Animated GIF. Simply load the GIF in Image Ready, select a frame, and then repeat the above steps.