May 23, 2004, Week 2 Completed

This was again fun and I learned to really love the Pen Tool. I know this will also be of big help to me with Illustrator. I had always used the Free Form Pen and now, I am free to be really creative with Bezier curves!

Please click on the thumbnails to view a larger image.

B. 2. What are the four things that you have to tell (or remind) Photoshop before it will stroke your path?
You must be sure to remind PS of what layer, brush, color and which path it is to stroke.

C. 3. We've talked about the Pen, the Convert Point tool, and the Direct Selection Arrow. When might you want to use the Add Anchor Point Tool or the Delete Anchor Point tool?
You might want to use the Add or Delete Anchor Point tool when...you want to add or delete an anchor point! Well, aside from that, if you are trying to make a smooth curve and it keeps on looking jagged, it may be that you have too many anchor points in that area of the path, so delete 1 and see if it improves the situation. If, on the other hand you are trying to make a curve and the distance is too great between the anchor points, add an anchor point and continue with the curve.

D. 3. n. What is the point of "testing the path?" What could go wrong with it? DID anything go wrong with yours? What was it and how did you fix it?

You "test the path" to be sure that everything is coming along okay...that curves are smooth, areas are filling or the way you planned. The problems I ran into were 'pointed' curves...Especially on my traced logo. I found that deleting some strategic anchor points smoothed the points away considerably and made my curves look better. I also did some moving of anchor points and some pulling here and there and then retested...kept doing that until I felt it was about as good as it was going to get!

What questions do you have about this lesson? Did you find any errors?

I don't really have any questions about the lesson and found no errors that I recognized! Hope I was not supposed to!!! I will say that working with the lesson and doing some things again and again gave me great practice and that after a bit I sort of knew which way a handle was going to shape a curve! I like that.

...a shape with some round parts and some sharp points...When I saved the larger "melogo", it looked so sharp and crisp in the .gif format. The thumbnail however will not look sharp no matter how I save it.

Using a Vector Mask. I was really happy with the way the mask was so easy and worked so well. I used my Gaspee Days Collage I had prepared last year for the celebration of Gaspee Days here in Warwick, RI, with the mask. .

Changing your Logo Picture. I pulled some anchor points around to try to make the logo picture look like a shield.

"To Choose a project for this tutorial, I suggest you look around and find something interesting in your office or kitchen...Remember if you can see it you can draw it."

I chose these blue pitchers I have on the windowsill here in the computer room. One is large, the other small, but both blue. I plopped them where I could look at them, then got going with the pen tool. I was surprised at the fun and relative success. I do plan to explore this a lot in the future! I used blue and white, Drop Shadow and Satin Layer Effects.

I chose to do the University of Rhode Island Ram. The fact that my grandson attends/lives at URI and that I love the RAM logo were the influences for my choosing it. My problem: the logo was in slices and so I had to gather the slices, reassemble them in Photoshop and then work at tracing the logo! I had a lot of adding and deleting of anchor points and finally, after a lot of work felt it was as good as it would be for now.