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About this lesson
Custom shapes can be very useful in a variety of contexts. They can be used for logos, or commonly used to design elements of a page or poster layout. They are great for symbols, arrows and signs as well.
Exercise files
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Quick reference
Topic
How to use, create and save custom shapes.
When to use:
Custom shapes can be very useful in a variety of contexts. They can be used for logos, or commonly used as design elements of a page or poster layout. They are great for symbols, arrows and signs as well.
Instructions
To use existing shapes
- Select the Shapes tool from the Tools menu
- From the Options bar, use the drop-down menu to select the shape you want
- Click on the ‘Gear' icon to add more shapes to your drop-down choices.
To create a custom ‘speech bubble’
- Choose the Ellipse tool from the Tools bar.
- Draw out an ellipse shape on your document.
- Switch to the Pen tool
- Choose ‘shape' option in the Options bar.
- Choose ‘combined shapes’ option in the Options bar
- Draw one side of the bubble connecter
- Using the Option key (Mac) or ALT key (Windows), adjust the handles of the path to get desired shape
- Change to Path Selection tool
- Press ALT or Option and click the shape to duplicate, and place it on other side of bubble.
- In Edit dropdown menu, choose Transform Path/Flip Horizontally
How save a custom shape for future use
- Make sure that the new object is selected and that the path is visible by pressing Command-(Mac) or Control-(PC) Shift-'H'
- Go to Edit dropdown menu and select ‘define custom shape’ option
- Name shape and press OK
Tip
Shapes are vector objects so they can be as large or small as you want, with no loss of quality.
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- 00:05 For those looking to create custom vector designs in PhotoShop,
- 00:08 the Custom Shape tool, which can be found with your other shape tools,
- 00:11 is a great place to start. Up on your Options bar you can choose from
- 00:16 the many shapes that Adobe has provided for you to use.
- 00:18 If this is your first time exploring custom shapes in PhotoShop,
- 00:21 you may only see a few them in the shape picker. But if you click on the gear icon
- 00:25 at the top right corner,
- 00:27 you can choose to add a variety of packs that come with PhotoShop.
- 00:30 Let's load them all in just to see what's available.
- 00:33 When this popup comes up,
- 00:34 choosing 'append' will add a new shape to the bottom of your current list.
- 00:38 Or, pressing 'OK' will replace the current shapes.
- 00:41 And here are all the shapes that you have access to in PhotoShop.
- 00:45 Now for many users this may be more than enough. But for those who tend to create
- 00:49 their own shapes for their website or designs,
- 00:51 let me show you how you can create your own custom shapes in PhotoShop,
- 00:55 and access them whenever you need it. For this example we're going to be creating a
- 00:59 simple speech bubble,
- 01:01 with two tails - perfect for comics when two people are talking.
- 01:04 Starting out simple, switch over to your Eclipse tool and drag-out an
- 01:08 oval anywhere in the document. Now that the oval is in place,
- 01:11 let's switch to our Pen tool to create the first tail.
- 01:15 When the Pen tool is selected
- 01:16 make sure that the 'shape' option is chosen on your Options bar,
- 01:19 and then over to the right, choose the 'combine shapes' option to ensure that the
- 01:23 final result is one shape instead of three.
- 01:24 Place your first point somewhere inside the oval.
- 01:29 And then when you click to make the second point drag your mouse to the left,
- 01:33 to create a curved path.
- 01:34 Now if you were to simply click back inside the oval you're going to be left
- 01:38 with a pretty skewed shape. To work around this, hold
- 01:41 down your Option key on the Mac
- 01:43 or the ALT key in Windows, and drag the curved point back toward the anchor point.
- 01:47 This will help limit the big loop curve that we saw a moment ago.
- 01:51 Now we can go ahead and click and drag back inside the oval
- 01:55 to create the last curve. With that tail complete, a simple duplication should do
- 02:00 the trick for the second one.
- 02:01 On your Tools bar, grab the 'path selection' tool,
- 02:04 and click on the tail that we just created. The 'path selection' tool allows us to
- 02:09 select a different path
- 02:10 that makes up the overall shape. You should see the path in the anchor points
- 02:14 around the tail.
- 02:15 With it selected, just like you would duplicate the standard layer,
- 02:18 hold down your ALT or Option key and drag it to the right.
- 02:21 You can also flip it as well. Under the Edit menu
- 02:25 you're going to see a Transformed Path submenu; let's go ahead and flip it
- 02:28 horizontally.
- 02:29 and place it on the right, towards the top. Perfect!
- 02:32 If at any point you want to hide or show your past, pressing 'Command- or Control-
- 02:36 Shift and 'H'' will do exactly that. So now we have a new custom shape completed.
- 02:42 How do we save it for future use? Back under the Edit menu you may have noticed
- 02:46 the 'define
- 02:47 custom shape' option, however, it may be greyed out at times.
- 02:50 In order for this option to become available, you must have a shape layer
- 02:54 active, which we do, but you also need to have the paths visible.
- 02:58 A moment ago we use the 'Command- or Control-Shift-'H'' shortcut to hide the
- 03:02 path.
- 03:03 Using that same shortcut will reveal our path once again,
- 03:06 and will also allow us to select the 'define custom shape' option.
- 03:10 When the pop-up comes up, give your shape a name and press OK.
- 03:14 Now at any point in the future, you can choose your custom shaped tool
- 03:18 and your newly created shape will be available for you to use.
- 03:21 And because shape layers are vectors, you can drag the shape out as big or as
- 03:24 small as you need it.
- 03:25 And that is how you can create your own custom shapes in PhotoShop.
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