From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

949 The new Line tool in Photoshop 2021

From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

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949 The new Line tool in Photoshop 2021

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- Hey gang, this is Deke McClellan, welcome to Deke's Techniques. Have you ever used the line tool in Photoshop? The one that resides in the same fly-out menu as the effector base rectangle and ellipse tools. Well, for 20 years from Photoshop 6.0 in the year 2000 to Photoshop 21.0 in the year 2020, the line tool didn't actually draw a lines. It drew very skinny rectangles, which means that you had to decide the thickness of a line slash rectangle before you drew it. Where did it to go with Adobe? But now in Photoshop 22.1 AKA Photoshop 2021, the line tool draws real lines. That is to say open path outlines that you can stroke with any line weight you want, anytime you like. Where did it go Adobe? By way of example, I'm going to show you how to use the new and improved line tool to draw this seamlessly repeating candy cane pattern. Now, I first demonstrated how to make this pattern back in Deke's Techniques episode 481, near the end of the year 2015, which I am not recommending you go back and watch by the way, because I'm about to show you now how to do it so much better. All right, so here's at least one possible application of the candy cane pattern, just so you can see it open here inside Photoshop and here's the seamlessly repeating pattern tile that we'll be creating entirely using the line tool. And once again I want to emphasize that you'll need to be using Photoshop 2021 or later. In which case go up to the file menu and choose the new command and then dial in width and height values of 400 pixels. The resolution value does not matter on width, set the color mode to RGB color and go ahead and assign your favorite color profile. In my case, I'm working with good old SRGB. At which point, I'll click the Create button in order to create a new document. Now, even though we'll be drawing diagonal lines, as you saw just a moment ago, it's going to be easier to get everything in the right location, if we start with a horizontal line. And so I'll drop down here to the shape tool fly out menu and select the new and improved line tool. And now I'll just go ahead and draw a horizontal line, that's bigger than the canvas, notice that. And just to ensure my angle value is zero degrees I'll press and hold the Shift key like so and I'm looking for a length value in that heads up display of 640.0 pixels. And that's just going to ensure that our line is wider than the canvas. All right, now very likely Photoshop's going to automatically pop up the properties panel, which is handy, because I can go ahead and change the fill and stroke attributes right here. You can also change them on the far left side of the options bar. In any event, I'm going to click on the fill and set it to no color like so and I'll click off that item in order to hide it and I'm going to go ahead and create the line weight value up to 80 pixels. So in other words, you can change the thickness of your open path outline after the fact in Photoshop 2021 and later and that's going to give me a big thick line. Now I don't want it to be black, so I'll go ahead and click on that stroke and then click on this little spectrum icon in the top right corner of this pop-up panel, to bring up which generally known as the color picker dialog box. I'll change the hue value to 350 degrees, which is slightly on the magenta side of red. I'll take the saturation value up to 100% and I'll set the brightness value to 90%. So we have this vivid red, as you're seeing in the background. At which point I'll click Okay to accept that change and I'll hide the properties panel as well. Now I want to know exactly center this line and so I'm going to press Control + A or Command + A on the Mac, to select the entire canvas. I'll switch to the move tool up here at the top of the toolbox, which you can get by pressing the V key And then you need to click on each one of these center icons, align horizontal centers and then align vertical centers. And while that may not make much of a difference, it's going to make all the difference in the world where the final pattern is concerned. Now press Control + D or Command + D on the Mac to de-select my artwork. And now comes the point at which we want to rotate this line. And the easiest way to do that nowadays is to switch back to one of their shape tools, in my case the line tool works out fine. And notice that we now have these so-called on canvas controls. And so you can drag an end point in order to change the length and angle of the line like so, I have no desire to do that, however. So I'll press Control + Z or Command + Z on the Mac to undo that change. If you move your cursor just slightly beyond that square handle, you'll see the rotate cursor at which point you can drag to rotate the line. And I'm going to press the shift key as I drag to constrain my angle value as you can see in that heads up display that negative 45.0 degrees. At which point I'll release to create this perfectly centered diagonal line. Now I want it to have a little bit of depth, so I'm going to add an inner glow effect. Click on the effects icon down here at the bottom of the layers panel and choose inner glow. Now by default, Photoshop wants to create a white glow, that's not what I'm looking for at all. So I'll click on that white swatch right there or it may be some other color, I'll change the hue value once again to 350 degrees, I'll set the saturation value once again to 100%, but this time I'm going to set the brightness value to 50%. So we ended up with a dark red, at which point I'll click Okay to accept that change. Now we don't want to blend motive screen, we want a shadow, so I'll change that blend mode to multiply. And then I'll create the opacity value up to 100% and finally going to set the size value to half of the line weight, which as you may recall is 80 pixels. And so I'll just enter 80 slash two in order to divide 80 by two and then when I press the Tab key, Photoshop does the math for me. At which point I'll click Okay to accept that change. All right, now I want this layer to be called thick lines for reasons that will become obvious later on. And then I want to jump a copy of this layer by pressing Control + J. That's going to be Command + J on the Mac and I'll just go ahead and call this guy thin lines this time around. And now we want to move this line to a different location by going into the edit menu and choosing free transform path or you have that shortcut of Control + T here on the PC or Command + T on the Mac. And now I want you to notice these X and Y values up here in the options bar, make sure the triangular Delta option right there is turned off. We do not want that on, instead we want to enter absolute positioning values. And so I'm going to change the X value to 100 and then tab to the Y value and change it to 100 as well. And bear in mind, we're working in a canvas that measures 400 by 400 pixels. So setting these coordinates in 100 pixel increments is going to work great. All right, now press the Enter key or the Return key on the Mac a couple of times in order to confirm that transformation. And then notice this line weight value up here in the options bar. You want to take it from 80 down to just eight pixels like so. Now notice that the line turns dark red and that's because the inner glow effect is too big. And so I'll double click on the inner glow specifically for the thin lines layer in order to bring up the layer style dialog box and I'll take the size value from 40 pixels down to four and then I'll click Okay. And you can see that we now have these dark red edges with a bright red line in the middle. All right, now I want to create a copy of this line at a new location. That's only possible using a keyboard shortcut of Control + Alt +T or Command + Option + T on the Mac. And notice that we're once again, seeing our X and Y coordinates. This time we want them each to be 300 pixels and so I'll change them both like so and that's going to move a copy of that line to the bottom right corner of the canvas. At which point I'll press the Enter key or the Return key on the Mac a couple of times to accept that change. Now, you'll go ahead and switch to the black arrow tool, the one that Photoshop calls the path selection tool, even though it has a keyboard shortcut of A for arrow. And now I'll shift click on this top line like so. So both of the thin lines are selected and now we want to create copies of them by pressing Control + Alt + T or Command + Option + T on the Mac. This time we want to turn that triangular Delta icon on so that we're making relative adjustments as opposed to absolute ones. And so I'll go ahead and click on the X and change it to 12 and also change the Y value to 12. So 12 and 12 for the X and Y values at which point press the Enter key or the Return key on the Mac a couple of times to apply that change. All right, now we want to transform the original thin lines in the opposite direction, so go ahead and click on one of them and shift click on the other. So the top line in each pair in order to select them with a black arrow tool, press Control + Alt + T or Command + Option + T on the Mac in order to invoke the free transform mode, as well as duplicate these bands and then change the X value to negative 12 this time around, tap to the Y value and change it to negative 12 as well. And that's going to move duplicates of those path outlines up and to the left. At which point I'll press the Enter key or the Return key on the Mac a couple of times to accept that change, after which point you can click off the path outlines in order to deselect them. And that's how you create the base style for a candy cane pattern using the new and improved line tool, which now draws dynamic open path outlines here inside Photoshop 2021 and I would presume later. Now, even though we just spent an awful a lot of effort creating our meticulous candy cane pattern, it is secretly broken. Which is why if you're a member of LinkedIn learning, I'm going to show you how to fix it, using another new feature in Photoshop 2021 Pattern Preview. Looking forward to next week? Well, you should, because that's when we're going to apply our meticulously created candy cane pattern to this holiday themed, vector based entirely dynamic candy cane rhinoceros. Deke's Techniques each and every week, Keep watching.

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