Today I’m going to show you how you can manipulate text and paths in Photoshop to create some pretty interesting effects.

Step 1

So, as always, open up Photoshop and create a new canvas. Grab the ellipse tool or any other shape tool. Draw that shape onto your canvas. I chose a circle/ellipse.

Step 2

Now grab the text tool and hover the cursor over the perimeter of your shape where the path should be outlined. The cursor will change from a dotted rectangle around the text cursor to a dotted line through the text cursor. At this point, left click and you will be able to type along the path.

Step 3

Now although you’re using text, you don’t have to necessarily use letters, you can use punctuation marks such as the full stop or hypen to create a nice dotted or dashed border, like below

Step 4

And that’s the magic you can do with text and paths, there’s a lot of experimenting that you can do by using the pen tool, finding fonts with shapes and using multiple layers. So why not give it a try! 🙂

Today, I’m going to demonstrate how you can play with paths/shapes and transform them to your liking.

Step 1

Open up Photoshop and create a new canvas. First thing to do is set up a grid so from the top menu click Edit -> Preferences -> Guides, Grids and Slices. For the grid field-set, add a grid line every 2 pixels with 4 subdivisions. Press Ctrl + ‘ (apostrophe key) to display the grid.

Step 2

Zoom in to around 1200% and draw a circle. Hold shift while drawing, to maintain an equal width and height. Grab the path selection tool (A), select the circle path, copy it by pressing ctrl + c and paste it with ctrl + v, then move the duplicated shape horizontally (holding shift again).

Step 3

Now copy the two circles (drag to select them or hold shift and click each one), paste them and move them vertically down.

Step 4

Keep duplicating circles until you have an 8×8 grid or more. Then draw a larger circle filling the grid of circles, we will use this as a base for warping. You may want to reduce the opacity a little so you can differentiate between the grid of smaller circles and the larger circle.

Step 5

Now we warp our grid of circles. Make sure the right layer is selected and click on Edit -> Transform -> Warp. First drag the four corners in so that they touch the perimeter of the circle. Then the four sides, and finally make the centre square larger by dragging each corner outwards and there you have it! There’s plenty of fun to be had with vector shapes so give them a try.

Today, I will show you how to create a simple 32px by 32px pictogram of a magnifying glass that is just perfect for search boxes. Again, only five steps, so if you have 10 minutes, why not give it a shot?

Step 1

Open up Photoshop and create a new canvas with a width and height of 32px. When zooming right in for these pixel perfect icons it’s a good idea to use a grid so from the top menu Edit -> preferences -> Guides, Grids & slices. As you can see I set a grid line every 2 pixels with 4 subdivisions.

Step 2

Grab the ellipse tool and draw a circle within the grid lines (use them!). Holding shift will help in drawing an equal height and width circle.

Step 3

With the circle path selected (should be already, once you’ve drawn it) and the ellipse tool also selected hold alt and shift to draw another smaller circle inside the circle you just drew. By holding alt you are subtracting the shape rather than adding it.

Step 4

Now select the rounded rectangle tool (radius 5px) and draw a handle just to the side of the circle.

Step 5

Rotate both layers about 30-45 degrees and there you have it, a simple pictogram. (I rotated both layers which you can see below messed up the pixel symmetry a bit so you may just want to rotate the handle instead).

Finished!

That’s it! Any questions just leave a comment below and I’ll respond asap 🙂

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