Draw Tool and Preset Shapes Tool

The Draw and Preset Shapes tools can be used in either vector or raster mode. Using these two tools, you can create just about any outlined graphic you want with little effort.

Draw Tool

The draw tool is used to create straight lines, bezier curves, freehand lines and point to point lines. This tool can be set to either vector or raster. Since vector graphics are adjustable, I recommend you alway create lines with the vector option selected.

The following graphic illustrates the Tool Options palette for the Draw tool:

The Type box allows you to select the type of line you want to draw.

The Width box allows you to enter the width of the line.

The Line style is just that, the style of the line. This tool comes with numerous preset line styles from dashed or dotted lines to lines with arrows at each end. You can even create your own custom line styles.

Antialias - Check this box to antialias your lines. If you are creating a line in any shape other than a straight line, you will probably want to have antialias checked. The following graphic illustrates a freehand line drawn with antialias on (left) and antialias off (right):

Vector - Check this box to create your line as vector. This has the advantage of being able to edit the line you have drawn instead of starting over if you don't like the results.

Close Path - When this box is selected, the start and end points of your line will be connected when you release the mouse, assuming that your line is curved in some way so that the ends can connect.

The second tab on the Tool Options palette contains three other settings for the draw tool:

Join - The Join choices are Miter, Round and Bevel. These options only apply to the Point to Point draw tool. They determine the shape of the join where two segments of the line meet. The following graphic illustrates the Miter (left), Round (middle) and Bevel (right) joins on a point to point line.

Miter limit - This control again, applies only to the Point to Point line, and is active only if a Mitered Join is used. This setting determines the maximum value allowed for the Miter length to the line width. The Miter length is defined as the length in pixels from the inside edge of the join to the outer point. If the ratio is less than the Miter Limit, the result is a normal Mitered Join. If the ratio exceeds the Miter Limit, the tip of the Miter is cut off at the limit, giving something that resembles a Bevel Join. The highest allowable Miter Limit is 30. It is best to keep the Miter Limit at the high end, otherewise some of your Mitered Joins may be truncated.

Curve Tracking - This option is located on the second tab of the Tool Options palette. This only effects the freehand line type. Curve tracking determines the distance between the nodes used to create your curve. The closer the nodes are the better the curve will be defined. Therefore, lower values allow you to create tighter curves without distortion. If you want smooth curves, though, you will want to keep the Curve Tracking numbers in the higher range. The following graphic illustrates a freehand line drawn with Curve Tracking set to 1 (left) and 30 (right).

The type of line you draw depends on how you have your Color Palette set. For a simple stroked line, turn off the background color and leave the Foreground color active. For a stroked line, have both color swatches active. If you are drawing a curved line, you will want to have only the stroke (foreground color) active since you probably don't want the curved line to be filled with a color. The following graphic demonstrates a bezier curve line with stroke only active and with stroke and fill active:

Single Line

Fill has no effect on the Single Line setting. It always draws with the stroke color only. Single lines are used to create straight or angled lines. If you hold down the Shift key while drawing single lines, you will end up with smooth edges on your lines, even if you don't have Antialias set on. If you don't constrain the lines, you will end up with jagged edges.

Bezier Curve

Bezier curve is used to draw smooth flowing lines. To create a bezier curve:

  1. Open a new graphic large enough to hold your curved line.
  2. Set the stroke line to a solid color and the fill (background) off.
  3. Set the line width (usually a small number) and turn on Antialias. Set to Vector.
  4. Draw a straight line from left to right (hold down the Shift key to constrain the line).
  5. Click once below the line and once on top of the line to create the curve.

  6. Release the mouse.
  7. You can edit the curve of the line by clicking on the Object Selector tool then on the curved line. Choose Node Edit.


  8. To increase the curve of the line, pull out on the round handle. To decrease the curve, push in on the round handle.

Point to Point

To create a line drawing using Point to Point, simply click on the graphic where you want your point to be. Keep clicking until you are done. This will probably result in crooked lines. But, do not despair. This is very easy to click. Until you right click and choose Quit Node Editing, you can fix the lines (you can even fix them afterwards by editing the nodes). Hold down the Shift key and cycle through the nodes until you hit the one you want to straighten. Then hold down the Ctrl key and hit an arrow key in the direction you want to go to fix the line. Continue on through the nodes until you have all of them fixed. Then right-click and quit node editing. You can use this same technique to fix lines created when you are not in Vector mode, but you will not be able to go back later and work on the lines again. Since it is so easy to convert your vector lines to raster, I recommend you always create your line drawings in Vector mode. The following graphic illustrates a line drawing with jagged lines (left), the nodes edited to fix the lines (middle) and the final drawing (right).

Create a Pill Button Shape Creating a pill button shape with the Line tool is a piece of cake:

  1. Activate the Draw tool, Single Line, Width 50, Antialias and Vector checked.
  2. Choose the Line Style Round.
  3. Holding down the Shift key, draw a short line.
  4. Using the Vector handle on the right, pull the line until it is the length you want. You will not be able to expand the height of the graphic, only the width.
  5. Choose Selections>From Vector Object and save the selection to an Alpha Channel (Selections>Save to Alpha Channel).
  6. You now have a template for a pill button.
Click here for a tutorial on creating a pill button.

Preset Shapes Tool

The Preset Shapes Tool opens a whole new world to the "artistically impaired" (like me). Paint Shop Pro comes with an extensive set of Preset Shapes and you can easily create your own to add to your library of shapes (I'll cover this later).

The Tool Options palette for this tool allows you to control the final appearance of the shapes you create.

When you click on the window for the shapes, it enlarges and allows you to view all the available shapes.

Retain Style - When this box is checked, the style of the preset shape you choose is unchanged. If it is unchecked, you will only get the basic outline of a complicated shape. The following graphic illustrates this. The graphic on the left is the Cylinder preset shape with Retain Style checked, the graphic on the right, with Retain Style unchecked.

Antialias - You should always have Antialias checked if a shape contains any curves. The following graphic illustrates a circle shape with antialias checked (left) and without (right).

Create as Vector - With this box checked, you will create shapes in vector format. This is the recommended procedure for shapes because vector shapes can be edited, whereas raster shapes cannot.

Line Width - The value in this box will determine the width of the stroked line on the shape.

Line Style - Choosing a line style other than solid can have some interesting effects on a shape. The Line Style is disabled when you have "Retain Style" activated. The following graphic illustrates a couple of different lines styles on a shape. The circle on the left has the Line Style set to "diamond" and the circle on the right has the Line Style set to "short dash".

Changing Colors of Preset Shapes OK, you really like the Cylinder, but you need it to be blue rather than red. No problem. To change the color of a preset shape:

  1. Draw the Preset shape with Retain Style and Vector selected.
  2. Click on the plus sign to the left of the layer called Cylinder. This will expand the layer.
  3. Click on the layer called "Front" and choose "Properties" on the Tool Options Palette. Change the color of the Fill to the color you want the cylinder to be.
  4. Or, click on the Pattern Tab and choose a pattern to fill the cylinder.
  5. Repeat step 3 on the "Back" layer.
The following graphic illustrates the Cylinder preset shape changed to blue (on the left) and filled with a pattern (two cylinders on the right).

Drawing with Preset Shapes Tool To draw with the Preset Shapes tool, click on the graphic at the top corner of where you want to start drawing and pull the cursor to the right and down. To contstrain the shape to a proportional shape (no distortion), hold down the shift key while dragging with the mouse.

The following graphic illustrates an arrow shape drawn without constraining proportionally (left) and with constraining (right).

You will notice that there is no preset shape for a circle or for a square. To draw a circle, select the Ellipse shape and hold down the shift key while drawing. To create a square, select the Rectangle shape and hold down the shift key while drawing.

The second tab on the Shapes Tool Options Palette contains settings for Join and Miter Limit. These work the same as on the Draw tool.

You can create some very nice shapes by settings on the Join and Miter. The following shapes were created (left graphic) Star Shape, Line Width 50, Fill Color and Stroke Color activated and the same, Join set to Round and (right graphic) Same as left graphic except Join set to Bevel.

Rounded Rectangle - One complaint about the Preset Shapes tools has been about the Rounded Rectangle. It does a pretty poor job of created the rounded edges on a rectangle. The solution to this problem is to create the rounded rectangle out of the rectangle shape set the same as outlined above. This method doesn't work well with the rounded rectangle shape, though, as you still end up with a jagged edge. The following graphic illustrates a rounded rectangle created as described here (left) and a rounded rectangle created from the Rounded Rectangle preset shape.

Create Your Own Shapes

One very cool feature about the Shapes Tool is the ability to create your own shapes. This works similar to creating picture tubes. The best source for new shapes are fonts. As an example, the following is how I created the Splats shapes I use on my intro page. I created them from a dingbat font called Splats. I wanted the splat shape, but I didn't want the letters in the interior of the shape.

  1. Create a new graphic with a transparent background large enough to hold the number of shapes you want. For this tutorial I created a graphic 200x200.
  2. Set gridlines to help you line up the graphics (I set mine to 100x100).
  3. Open a new graphic 200x200.
  4. Set the Stroke off on the Colors Palette and set the fill color to black.
  5. Place a splat font on the new graphic.
  6. Click on the Object Selector tool and select the font with the tool active. Right click on the font and choose Convert Text to Curves>Single Shape.
  7. To make viewing the letter part of the font easier, I pulled on the right bottom corner of the font to increase the size to almost the size of the graphic.
  8. Click on Node Edit on the Tool Options Palette.
  9. Drag a box around the letter part of the font graphic and hit delete. The following graphic illustrates (left to right) the font with the letter before removing it, the font with the letter removed and a fiew of what the font now looks like.

  10. Reduce the size of the graphic by repeating step 7 in reverse.
  11. Copy your graphic (Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C).
  12. Paste your copied graphic on the original graphic "As a new Vector Selection".
  13. Repeat with remaining font shapes.
  14. Expand the vector layer. You will see that the layers are named after the fonts. This is what will show up under the shape in the Shapes Tool. To give the shapes a more meaningful name, double click on a shape layer and give it a new name. I named mine Splats1, 2, etc.
  15. Choose File>Export>Shape. Give the export a name you will recognize. I named mine Splats.
The exported graphic you just created will be saved to your Shapes folder under the folder where you have installed Paint Shop Pro. You can open this graphic and change the shapes if you want (they were saved as vector graphics) and then export the shapes again. The shapes are saved with a .jsl extension. You can now share your shapes with other PSP users. You can also pick up shapes other people have created. If you pick up a .jsl shapes file, just drop it into your Shapes folder. The next time you use the shapes tool, your new shapes will be available for use.

Hints for Installing Shapes

It can be very tempting to run out there and start collecting shapes. This is not a bad thing, but you want to be careful how many shapes you have in your shapes folder. Too many shapes can be confusing when you are looking for a particular shape and loading a large number of shapes can cause performance problems on machines that don't have a large amount of RAM.

I keep the basic shapes I use the most in the Shapes folder and have moved all my other shapes to a Shapes1 folder. When I want to use the shapes from the Shapes1 folder, I click on my File Locations button on the Standard Toolbar (that's one of the first buttons I installed on the toolbar), and change the location for Shapes from Shapes to Shapes1.