how to draw lines on photoshop

While Photoshop doesn't offer a dashed line option, such every bit that found in Illustrator's Stroke palette, you can easily simulate them by editing a brush in the Brushes palette.

The primal to dashed lines is the Spacing option. Combined with Roundness in Photoshop 7, y'all can change a square castor into a dashed line quickly. Here's what you lot need to run into in the Photoshop 7 Brushes palette:

Remember that you demand to open up the Brushes palette from the Palette Well or the Window menu (or the F5 key). The small Brushes palette plant at the left cease of the Options Bar is for castor selection, not brush editing or creation. And what if the Brushes palette is grayed out and unavailable? Switch to a brush-using tool, such as the Brush tool (press B on the keyboard).

Reducing the Roundness makes a foursquare brush flat. Increasing the Spacing moves each "example" of the brush tip imprint farther autonomously. (Think of Photoshop's brushes as applying the castor tip many times close together as y'all drag, rather than as a continuous stream of color, like an ink pen.) And, of course, the "dash" doesn't need to be at 50% roundness.

Don't forget that yous can make vertical dashed lines rather than horizontal by irresolute the Angle setting in the Brushes palette to 90 degrees.

In Photoshop 6, you must first define a small-scale rectangle as a castor and and then adjust the spacing. (Photoshop half-dozen doesn't allow yous to change the Roundness value for non-round brushes.) Create a rectangle of the size of your dashes, make full with black, and utilise the menu command Edit> Define Castor. You can use the Rectangular Marquee tool to create the shape-make sure that Feathering is set to zero in the Options Bar.

Give the new castor a distinctive name, one that reflects both its size and purpose.

Once y'all've created your dashed line, you can use it with any castor-related tool. In addition to the Castor (Paintbrush in Photoshop vi), Pencil, History, Art History, and Eraser tools, you use brushes with the stamp, focus, and toning tools.

Remember, nevertheless, that these dashes will not follow the paths of the cursor, but instead stay oriented to the page. This figure shows the difference between a dashed line created in Photoshop (top) and one created in Adobe Illustrator (bottom). The Illustrator dashes follow the path no matter how it curves.

The orientation of the "dashes" to the path in Photoshop is insignificant when a symmetrical castor is used. A circular castor, for instance, never seems to exist mis-oriented.

When you do need to curve a dashed line, remember the Shear filter (Filter> Misconstrue> Shear). Y'all can bend and twist a straight line. To save a pace, draw the line vertically (the filter works but horizontally). Information technology's also usually a good idea to accept the dashed line on a carve up layer and have no agile pick.

The Shear filter enables you to bend and twist. Click on the vertical line in the preview window to add an anchor point and drag. You tin can place several points as necessary. And if you'll be working close to the edge of the window, click the push for Echo Edge Pixels.