Adobe 23101335 User Guide - Page 171

161 Chapter 6: Drawing and Editing T he drawing tools let you create and edit vector shapes. You can work with shapes in shape layers and as paths; you can also create rasterized shapes, which can be edited with the painting tools. The drawing tools provide an easy way to create buttons, navigation bars, and other items used on Web pages. Other tools and commands let you transform and retouch an image. About drawing and painting When creating graphics on a computer, there is a distinction between painting and drawing. Painting involves changing the colors of pixels using a painting tool. You can apply colors gradually, with soft edges and transitions, and manipulate individual pixels using powerful filter effects. However, once you apply a brush stroke, there is no simple way to select the entire brush stroke and move it to a new location in the image. For more information on painting, see "Painting" in online Help. Drawing, on the other hand, involves creating shapes that are defined as geometric objects (also called vector objects). For example, if you draw a circle using the ellipse tool, the circle is defined by a specific radius, location, and color. You can quickly select the entire circle and move it to a new location, or you can edit the outline of the circle to distort its shape. (See "About bitmap images and vector graphics" on page 91.) Working with shapes provides several advantages: • Shapes are object-oriented-you can quickly select, resize, and move a shape, and you can edit a shape's outline (called a path) and attributes (such as line weight, fill color, and fill style). You can use shapes to make selections and create libraries of custom shapes with the Preset Manager. • Shapes are resolution-independent-they maintain crisp edges when resized, printed to a PostScript printer, saved in a PDF file, or imported into a vector-based graphics application. Drawing shapes and paths The pen tools and shape tools provide several options for creating shapes and paths: • You can create a shape on a new layer. The shape is automatically filled with the current foreground color; however, you can easily change the fill to a different color, a gradient, or a pattern. The shape's outline is stored in a layer clipping path, which appears in the Paths palette. • In Photoshop, you can create a new work path. A work path is a temporary path that is not part of your image until you apply it in some way. You can save a work path in the Path palette for later use. • When using the shape tools, you can create a rasterized shape on an existing layer. The shape is automatically filled with the current foreground color. After you create a rasterized shape, you cannot edit it as a vector object.