OVERVIEW & OBJECTIVES
Photoshop is, at heart, a bitmap application, and we’ve spent most of our time exploring Photoshop’s bitmap (raster) capabilities. But in Assignment 8 we looked at type and this week we’ll explore other vector tools available to us in the Photoshop toolbox.
When you draw a vector path, you aren’t drawing a line made of pixels; you’re actually creating a mathematical formula for the line that defines its size, shape, angle, etc. with an equation. Vector images remain crisp and sharp no matter what size you make them, because the computer is simply multiplying or dividing the mathematical description to create a new size for the object. Vectors are ideal for creating a logo, which may be 1 inch wide on the company stationery, and 20 feet wide on the front of the corporate headquarters building.
Photoshop began as a raster image editor. A number of versions ago, Adobe added vector capabilities to Photoshop. Although Photoshop now incorporates both raster and vector tools, the raster side is definitely its strong suit. If your work calls for extensive vector drawing, you would be better served by using a dedicated drawing application like Adobe Illustrator.
Vectors in Photoshop take the form of paths. Paths can be converted into selections, and selections can be converted into paths. Photoshop creates vector shapes through vector masks. These clipping paths are similar to other types of Photoshop masks: they control which area of the image shows.
Tools you should be using for this lesson include: pen tools, shape tools, effects