Stroke a path using pen tool in Photoshop



Freehand curves are great to draw on paper. When you draw the same in Photoshop and wish to alter them later, drawing curves using a free – hand method is a tough job and it takes a lot of time.

 I used my brush tool at 7px and drew a curve to see how well I have control with my hands. You can see that the curves are not smooth at the ends and they don’t look good.



Ya well, it happens !! To solve both of these problems, we have a simple technique in Photoshop called ‘stroking the path’. Our final curve will be something like this.



Looks great right ?? All you had to do was follow a series of simple steps.
Open a new document of any size you want. Using the pen tool just draw some random curves.




Next, open the brush menu by clicking Window -> Brushes or just press  ‘F5’ on your keyboard. The brush menu will open.


 You can see the first option called 'Shape Dynamics'.If you do not check the option then the curve will be something like this.


If this is what you are looking for,then good.But I want the edges of the curve to gradually reduce in size,hence I am going to check the 'Shape Dynamics' option.


Click on any brush size you want. I have used ‘Hard Mechanical 7 pixels’ brush. Now close the brush menu. Now go to the work area and click the pen tool and right-click anywhere on your path. A menu appears. Select the ‘Stroke Path’ option.



A sub-menu appears. In the tool, menu select ‘Brush’ and check in the ‘Simulate Pressure’ option. This is an important step.



Voila!! Your curve is now stroked with a very smooth brush just like a drawing.


Keep exploring the curves by making various changes in brush sizes and shapes.