625 Drawing tattoos with the Pen tool

- [Instructor] In this movie, we'll take our tattooed face so far and we'll apply a few changes. So for starters here, notice that the tattoos are awfully sharp. What we want is some softer edges so that the tattoos look like they're bleeding into the skin a little bit. Also notice that this area up here in the forehead is awfully blank. We need to add a few lines by duplicating the existing ones, and then check out this area around the mouth. Notice that we have these triangles inside these wedges that are going upward? Well we want to create some that are going downward as well.

And that'll help give you a little bit of experience with drawing with the pen tool inside Photoshop as well as applying a few path operations. Alright so I'll go ahead and switch over to the image in progress. Now what I want to do is adjust the feather value that's associated with all four of these shape layers, and that value is found inside the properties panel. And so I'll go up to the window menu and choose the properties command, at which point you can see that I do have a feather value right here, and I'm going to go ahead and zoom in on those wedges up here at the top of the forehead, and I'll increase the feather value, and notice as I do, I end up blurring those lines and I do so parametrically, meaning that I can adjust this numerical parameter to anything I want at any time I want.

So this is an altogether editable effect. In the end, I came up with a feather value of 2.0 pixels, which blurs the lines quite nicely. Alright now let's say you want to adjust multiple shape layers at the same time. Well then I'll just go ahead and click on chin and shift click on forehead, and notice that the properties panel is now dim. At least that's the way it is in the most recent version of Photoshop. That may change in the future. But for now, you can't change the feather value for multiple layers at a time. You have to select each layer independently. So I'll go ahead and click on the chin layer and I'll click on the feather value and I'll press shift up arrow a couple times to take that value up to 2 pixels and then I'll press the enter key or the return key on the Mac to accept that change.

Now I'll switch to the next layer down by pressing alt left bracket, or option left bracket on the Mac, which is going to move me down the stack as we're seeing here. And then I'll once again select that feather value, press shift up arrow a couple of times. It'd be nice if this value remained active so that I could now click on the forehead layer and that value would still be available to me, but notice what happened. That's pretty interesting. I'll press control z or command z on the Mac to undo that change. As soon as I did that, as soon as I adjusted this feather value right there and then I clicked on the forehead layer, at least a moment ago it just happened, you can rewind the movie and check it out, but what happened was that Photoshop somehow miraculously applied the feather value to the next layer down the stack.

Let's see if I can replicate that. I'm going to to go ahead and change this feather value to 0 this time and press the enter key or the return key on the Mac to accept that change. And I'll scroll up so we can see the portion of the image that's affected, it's this area right here inside the face. And so if I select that feather value again and I press shift up arrow a couple of times, notice that I do indeed blur those outlines inside the face while the outlines that are associated with the forehead layer which are these guys up here, as well as these across the bridge of the nose, they remain sharp.

But as soon I click on that forehead layer, they go ahead and feather as well. I don't know why that happens, but it does, so that's just something to keep an eye out for. Alright, now the wonderful thing about this is when you zoom in on the skin details, you can see that these fine hairs on the woman's face are emerging through the tattoo lines which gives the effet a certain amount of authenticity. Alright now I'm going to zoom out a little bit here and I'm going to switch over to these lines which are available to me on the forehead layer. So what I want to do is select my black arrow tool which is what Photoshop calls the path selection tool, I call it the arrow tool because you could press the A key, A for arrow, in order to select this tool.

And what it does is it allows you to select entire path outlines. So I'm going to go ahead and marquee this guy right there to select it, just this one. I want you to notice that this is an open path outline. I didn't bother to close it at the bottom, and you don't need to close path outlines in Photoshop because the program will automatically close the path for you. So in other words it just fills in the region that would be closed. Alright so I'm just going to zoom out and I'm going to scale and rotate a duplicate of this guy. Now normally you would scale and rotate by going to the edit menu and choosing free transform path, or you have that keyboard shortcut of control T, or command T on the Mac.

If you add the alt or option key though, you can transform a duplicate. So I'm just going to press control alt T, that would be command option T on the Mac in order to enter the free transform mode, and now I'll move this guy over a little bit, I'll drag this center point right there which represents the origin for the transformation down and to the left. Then I'll move my cursor outside the path and I'll go ahead and rotate this guy. In the end, I'm looking for a rotate value up here in the options bar of 4 degrees.

So I'll just go ahead and apply that setting and then I'll use the arrow keys on my keyboard in order to nudge this guy around. You might also want to drag this corner handle here to scale the shape a little bit so it's not quite so tall. And then I'll move this guy up and when you feel like everything is where it should be, maybe it needs to be a little closer, then go ahead and press the enter key or the return key on the Mac to apply that change. Now we want to repeat that duplication and you can make that happen by adding the shift key. So this time, you want to press control shift alt T, that's command shift option T on the Mac two times in a row.

So just mash your fist T two times in a row to repeat that transformation. Alright now just go ahead and marquee all four of these guys. Just partially marqueeing them is fine. And now we want to duplicate them onto the other side so once again, press control alt T, or command option T on the Mac, so you don't need to press the shift key this time around, in order to transform a duplicate of these path outlines. Then, you want to grab this origin point right here, this little target, and move it to the top of this shape which is located more or less in the center of the face.

Then, right click in the image window and choose flip horizontal in order to flip those path outlines like so, and then press the enter key or the return key on the mac a couple of times to apply that change. And notice that that feather value which is softening the path outlines is applied on the fly to each and every path on this shape layer. Alright now I'm going to scroll down to these little triangles right here and we're going to add a few more and so I'll go ahead and zoom in and then I'll select the face layer because that's the layer in which these triangles are found.

And I'll go ahead and grab my pen tool which you can get by pressing the P key and then you just want to draw a triangle, an upside down triangle by dragging, in order to create a smooth point like so, and if it's not in exactly the location you want it you can press the spacebar to move that guy around on the fly. And then I'll release in order to create that smooth point and I'll create another smooth point so so you're dragging away from the path in order to create that curve segment between those two smooth points. Then, while you're still dragging, press and hold the alt key or the option key on the Mac which allows you to move this control handle here in a different direction so that it's no longer symmetrical as it is by default.

So notice if you don't have the alt or option key down you end up with two symmetrical control handles. As soon as you press and hold the alt key, or the option key on the Mac, then you break the link between the handles. Alright, now I'll just go ahead and create another smooth point up here like so. I'll use the spacebar in order to move it around until I get it into something of a desirable position. You don't have to get a perfect triangle here. And then I'll just go ahead and press the alt key and click right there, that's an option click on a Mac to sever away that top control panel and I'll alt or option click again in order to create a straight segment between those two anchor points.

Alright now I'm going to switch from the black arrow tool to the white arrow tool which Photoshop calls the direct selection tool, but it is white as you can see. And then I'll marquee this curve segment on the right hand side in order to select that segment independently of the rest of the path outline and I'll drag this control handle inward in order to modify the curvature of this path and I might nudge this anchor point over a little bit as well. So the black arrow tool affects entire path outlines at a time. The white arrow tool allows you to modify independent anchor points and control handles.

Alright now let's switch back to the black arrow tool which you can do by pressing shift A which allows you to switch back and forth between the two arrows, and now I'll press control alt T or command option T on the Mac in order to transform a duplicate of this path outline. So notice I'm moving it and I'm moving a duplicate, not the original. And now I'll just go ahead and drag outside the transformation boundary in order to rotate the shape and then I'll nudge it into a better location like so. And then I'll press the enter key or the return key on the Mac to accept that change.

And now let's see how well re-duplicating this shape works. I'll press control shift alt T, that would be command shift option T on the Mac, in order to repeat the shape like so. Doesn't work all that well actually, but it's better than redrawing it, so I'll just go ahead and move this guy around. Now it is going to feel kind of herky jerky if you're zoomed way in and that's because you're moving the path in whole pixel increments. And that's just the way it works inside Photoshop. Alright I'll press the right arrow key in order to nudge that guy over a little bit. Then I'll press shift A to switch to the white arrow and I'll go ahead and drag this anchor point over and I'll drag this one inward.

Now at this point you're probably looking at this saying this is awful Deak, your triangles are totally extending too far outward. That's okay, we'll take care of that in a moment. Then press shift A to switch back to the black arrow tool, and press control alt T, command shift option T on the Mac in order to create another duplicate of that shape way out there in my case, I'll go ahead and drag this guy inward like so. Press shift A to switch back to the white arrow tool, select this anchor point, and drag it in. I'm going to need to drag in this control handle as well. And then I'll move in this anchor point like so and I'll drag in the control handle.

Might have got a little too far so I'll take this anchor point back out. Alright, now what we want to do is clip these triangles so that we have a little bit of a margin as we do with the bottom triangles. And so I'll start things off by switching back to the black arrow tool. Of course you could do that by pressing shift A, and I'll grab this guy, this path right here, notice this one, and I don't want to move it, I just wanted to show it to you. I am going, however, to alt or option drag it, and by doing it, by alt or option dragging it like so, I create a duplicate of it, as we're seeing right here.

Alright now you want to press shift A to switch back to the white arrow tool so obviously there's a lot of back and forthing involved, and then select this anchor point way down here and drag it way up and out like so. And do the same with this anchor point, drag it way up and out. Alright now I'm going to press shift A to switch back to the black arrow tool and with this path selected, I'm going to nudge it upward. I'm trying to keep an eye on this little area right there which is going to serve as my margin, so that we have this blank margin in the future. So I'll just go ahead and arrow this guy around, I'm just nudging it around from the keyboard.

And then I'll go up to this icon right here, which reads path operations, up in the options bar, I'll click on it and I'll choose subtract front shape. And that's going to subtract that shape from a ton of stuff below it. That's okay. Now you want to shift click on each one of these new triangles that you just created, and so in all you should end up with five shapes selected. Then go back up here to the path operations icon, click on it, and choose merge shape components. And that's going to merge the selected shapes like so. And with any luck, you'll end up with an effect that's similar to mine.

Alright now we need to duplicate those rectangles onto the left hand side and so I'll press control alt T or command option T on the Mac in order to enter the free transform mode as well as duplicate these paths. And now I'll go ahead and drag this target to right there in the center of that X, and I'll right click inside the image window and choose flip horizontal in order to flip those path outlines over to the left hand side, and they're not quite aligned, so I'll just use my arrow keys in order to nudge them into better positions and then I'll press the enter key or the return key on the Mac to accept that change and I'll click off the path outlines to hide them.

And once again, Photoshop automatically subjects our new path outlines to that feather value that we applied earlier in the movie. Alright now I'll just go ahead and press shift F in order to switch to the full screen mode and I'll press control 0 in order to center my zoom. And that's how you soften your tattoos using the parametric feather value as well as how you add tattoos using a combination of the arrow and pen tools.