Pokémon Acanthite Forums

God, how do people use photoshop, I don't understand it at all. Like how do you draw so perfect on it without a tablet. I just downloaded a free trial yesterday and I have no idea what I am doing. The pen tool is like the most retarded thing I've ever seen, it never does what I want it to dooo. :/.

Someone like help me :(. Tutorials suck on google :/.

Pen tool is for curved line, as far as I know.

If you're looking for something that makes a pen-shape mark, just use the paintbrush with a small brush setting.

And if you want good tutorials you can get them at http://www.pixel2life.com/tutorials/adobe_photoshop/

The only real use the pen tool has that I discovered so far is for vectoring, you know, making flat, one colored images. It works really sweet if you get the hang of it.

In case you don't know what vectors are.

So. I take it that you actually want to make lines - in that case the pen tool does sound like the obvious choice. I however suggest you use the brush tool with a small setting, or even better the pencil tool.

Pencil tool is found here:


Hold the brush tool button for a while and that small menu pops up.

The pencil tool is much cleaner, because if you erase it, it does not leave you with various gray colored pixels. Remember that if you do have to erase parts of it, you'd have to use the pencil eraser too.

Found on the top left of your screen:


Please note that if you do decide to use the pencil tool, you'd have to make your canvas size about four times as big to get a clean look:


The one on the left is done with a 8 px wide line, zoomed out to 25%, the other one is a 2 px, which is 25% of 8 px. Compare yourself and see that the one on the left is much smoother, and would look much better in proper artwork.

Both the brush tool and the pencil tool will do the trick - the brush tool makes it much easier, both in size as the amount of work, but the pencil tool gives you much more control over your art.

Another choice is the line tool.

The line tool can be found here:


The line tool is much like the brush tool, with the difference that the brush tool gives you the choice how fat you brush is, and the line tool gives you the choice how fat your line is. The line tool, as obvious with the name, creates straight lines. You can use them for art, if you keep the lines small enough to make them look smooth enough. If you make them too long, your outlines will look blocky, which is not something that looks enjoyable.

The line tool does have one quirk that is turned on standard when you open Photoshop, the Shape Layers option. I suggest you turn off this option and put it on Fill Pixels. You can do this on the top left of your screen, with the three small images that look like this:


It's probably on the left option for you right now, which makes every line you create a new Shape Layer. You'd want it to be on the right option, which makes it behave pretty much like the line tool from Paint.

When you open Photoshop, the lines are Anti-aliased, just like the brush tool. You have the option to turn it off, so it behaves like the the pencil tool and makes you able to use it for the same matter as you would use the pencil tool.

note: these lines are zoomed in till 300%

The option to turn on/off Anti-aliasing is on the same bar as the Shape Layer/Fill Pixels option, but on the far right. I forgot to screen it, and am too lazy to do now.

So, there you have it. There's four options I gave you for creating lines in Photoshop CS4.
1. Brush tool. Easy and quick to use, but makes it hard to erase if you did make any errors. This might work better with a tablet aswell.
2. Pencil tool. Works quite slow, but easy to correct any errors, and gives you pretty much complete control over your lines.
3. Line tool (A-a on). Easiest to use with just a mouse, but might look sloppy if done incorrectly, any errors will show.
4. Line tool (A-a off). Works best for those without a tablet who do want to make nice looking lines. Remember to use a big canvas and zoom out on your lines.

Before I got a tablet, I used option 4, using 3-5 px wide lines zoomed out till 25% of the original size. I figured it gave me a nice sugistyle look.
When I got a tablet, I switched to option 2. I used a size 5 brush, but due to Pen Pressure it would never really get bigger than 3 px wide.

Hope I helped :) I did put in quite some work, as I hope you can see. I tried to explain pretty much everything, as I do not know how much you know of Photoshop yet, and I want this to be readable by dummies too :)

Count, that was extremely helpful, thanks alot, and thanks for the tutorials Flame. I'm really fairly new to photoshop as far as drawing goes, I used to use it in school, but everything we did then was like total bs.

So if I may, Count, ask you that if it is possible to draw the type of pokemon Acanthite has without a tablet, and just the pencil tool perhaps?

Anyways, that quick tutorial did help me a lot, I appreciate it.

Do you mean the official art, just like Ken Sugimori's official art?

I guess it would be possible, but it would take a lot of effort and time.

Also, ComfyCushion (the creator of said art) is really skilled, and I guess he does use a tablet.

A tablet is not a necessity I guess, but it does make it a lot easier :)

Alright thanks. Yeah he is very skilled.

I've been thinking of buying a tablet for like a month now, but I'm not sure how it works. Like, do you just plug into your computer and open a new sheet on your computer and it magically appears on the tablet? Or is it much more complicated.

Usuaully they're like this:
http://www.tritech-computers.com/store2/...K-10PK.jpg
So, you dont see anything on it. So, i guess it takes precision to keep drawing ~
Not 100% sure on how people work with them :3

I've had a tablet for a while, it broke down on me, but I do have enough experience with it to say how it works :P

Here's the deal, you can see the tablet N²O showed has a smaller square on it. That is your drawing area, your paper. It generally is your screen. The things you draw don't appear on the tablet itself (unless you buy a REALLY expensive one :P), but on your digital canvas.
You hover with a small pen over that area, and you'll see your cursor going over the screen aswell. The position of the pen is the position of your cursor. Say, you hold the pen at 40% from the left and 20% from the top, the cursor of your screen will be at -yes- 40% from the left, and 20% from the top.

Pushing the pen's point on the tablet will act as if you're holding the mouse button. So if you push the pen on tablet and circle it, there'll be a circle drawn in your Photoshop.

It's really easy actually. My pen (not sure how others look) had two buttons on the side too, which, if pressed would act as the middle and right mouse buttons. :)

Ahh I see cool, can you then edit it on the computer as well? Like change the style of the line, or color?

The tablet is recognised by the computer as a second mouse. You open your usual drawing software (Photoshop) and select your bush as usual, then you use the tablet to draw.

I used to have one, but now I have a touch screen PC.

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