Making Photoshop Shapes

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Making Photoshop Shapes - 3

What's the Difference Between Raster and Vector Shapes?

When it comes to making Photoshop shapes, they can be raster or vector images.
Computer images are made of pixels, which are small squares of digital information with a colour value. The size of a pixel will depend on the resolution of the image. With two images of the same dimensions, a file with a resolution of 150 pixels will have larger pixels than an image of 300 pixels per inch.

Images from imaging editing programmes, such as Photoshop, are known as bitmap images, often referred to as raster images.

When a pixel image is resized, image quality can suffer. If a small image is considerably increased in size, then the loss of image quality can be substantial.

Drawing programmes, like Illustrator, create vector graphics, which are created mathematically. When an image is increased or reduced in size, a new mathematical formula is made and the quality of the image does not deteriorate.

Although Photoshop is a pixel generating programme, it can also create vector shapes. Vector shapes are best of strong graphics and text.

Create a new file with File > New.
Name the file Shape 1.
Set Width to 1000 pixels.
Set Height to 1000 pixels.
Set Resolution to 300 pixels.
Color Mode RGB Color.
Background White. OK.

The set of Shape Tools is towards to bottom of the toolbox.

Choose the Rounded Rectangle Tool.
In the top options bar, in the Radius box, enter a value of 50.
In the top options bar, click on the Color box and choose a bright red.
Drag the cursor across the image to draw a rectangle. It creates a red rectangle with rounded corners.

In the options bar, choose the Custom Shape Tool.
Click on the Shape box and from the selection of icons that pops up, choose the Starburst.
In the Color box, choose a black.

Drag the cursor across the image to draw a starburst shape.
In the toolbox, choose the Move Tool. Move the starburst over to the centre of the red rectangle.
To change the size of the starburst, go to Edit > Transform > Scale.
The Transform box surrounds the starburst. Drag the corner or side anchor point to resize and reshape the starburst.

The black shape is surrounded by a path.
The path is redrawn as the shape changes and there is no loss in quality.
In the Layers panel, notice how each new shape is on a new layer and its path is visible.

Now we'll see how to create a star and change the number of points.

making photoshop shapes

In the Layers panel, click on the eye icons of the two shapes layers in order to hide them.
In the top options bar, hover the cursor over the small shape icons and choose the Polygon Tool.
In the Sides box, enter a value of 11.
Click on the small arrow next to the Custom Shape Tool icon.
In the pop-up box, for Radius enter a value of 2.5 cm or 1 in.
Check the Star box.
Indent Sides By: 40%.

Drag the cursor on the image to produce the star shape.
Even after the star is made, its colour can be changed.
Click on the Color box in the options bar to open the Color Picker.
Choose a new colour and click OK.

The Shapes palette has a range of fun graphic shapes, but this function really comes into its own when original shapes are created, as we shall see from the later tutorials.

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