If you ever found it difficult to work with the Pen tool Photoshop CC 2018 now
has a solution for you and it's called the Curvature tool. You can think of this
as the Pen tool 2.0 or a more intuitive refined and user-friendly version of the
Pen tool. You can find it here in the tool bar so where the Pen tool is it's
joined together with it there's Curvature Pen tool and I actually went
ahead and already gave it or assigned a custom keyboard shortcut for it because
I started using it very often so I kept P for the pen tool but I use Y for the
Curvature Pen tool and that's a shortcut that was by default associated with the
History and Art History brush tools. To be honest I hardly ever use these so if
you want to do the same and you want to assign this shortcut you can do that in
the keyboard shortcuts and there under tools you will be able to find the new
curvature tool if you just scroll down. Now let's see what it can actually do so
if I want to make a selection of this door I could use the classic Pen tool
and go around and draw by clicking and then click and dragging to define my
curves. We all know how this works but if you are not a pro at using the Pen tool
it might be slightly tricky to go and create a selection of this. Now let me
show you why it can be easier to use the curvature tool so what I'm going to do
is to zoom a little bit closer just so you can see what I'm doing and I start
off by holding down the Alt key now that's quite important because by
holding down the Alt key I can make sure that I just drew straight lines and
notice what I'm doing is I'm only going and clicking on the corner points of
this selection so there we go we have very quickly identified the corner
points and now comes the amazing bit the real magic of the Curvature tool.
If I want to add curves all I have to do is to click and drag these points around
now it might not look perfect straight away because this point now here
turned into a smooth point by accident or maybe I just didn't hold down the Alt
at that point. But no worries I can just double-click on it and then immediately
fixes both sides of the curve or both sides of the path so let's see now this
point here I can just click and drag it into place and I can keep and drag these
into place now here we have an s-curve so all I have to do is to click once and
then click again and notice how I can move this Anchor Point along the path
easily to really find where it needs to go or where it fits the best. So once
again here using two points I could do it and I can always go back and fix
additional points if I need to. Once again click and drag click and drag
and wherever there is an issue just double-click on that point to make sure
it goes back to the way it should be. Now let's have a look at this from a
distance it looks perfect and by the way I just wanted to also mention that that
is also a new feature and it works both with the Pen tool and the Curvature tool
that we can change the view of our paths so when we are not drawing shapes while
we are drawing in path mode we can now see it much better thanks to the
thickness and color options. So these worth checking and worth looking at the
different color options depending on what's most comfortable or convenient
and then when we are ready with a path we can just turn this straight into a
mask and that will create a vector mask like that. So working with the
Curvature tool can make it so much easier for anyone who is not really
confident in working with paths in general and who hasn't really mastered
the Pen tool already. The good news is if you keep using the Curvature tool it
will actually teach you how to place your anchor points and direction lines
when you actually decide to move on using the Pen tool, so it's a great way
to introduce yourself to work with vector shapes and paths.
So make sure you give it a try in Photoshop CC 2018!