New to Photoshop - How do I make a smooth curve? Please help! (PS7)

Hello everyone!
I just got Photoshop 7 about a week ago, so I'm still learning the basics of the program... bear with me if this is the most ridiculously simple question ever asked... lol

I'm making a stylized picture composed wholly of curved lines. I free-handed the curves with my pointer tablet, and then I've been going in with the paintbrush thickening the lines and smoothing edges and whatnot (my tablet makes exceedingly wiggly lines for some reason)... It takes FOREVER going in and trying to make a perfectly smooth line using a 3px brush... (The original image is 3000 x 3450. Great learning experience, but my eyes feel like they're about to fall out of my skull after tracing, re-tracing, and re-re-tracing a 30-pixel area for an hour, lol.) I'm convinced that with the amazing images that come out of Photoshop, they must have a tool that makes creating curves a simple, easy process. But, I don't have a user's manual or anything like that to help me out... so I've been scouring the net trying to find any info on the topic, but I haven't been able to find anything...



Please help! I've attached an image of the picture I'm working on to show you what I mean... hopefully it'll be of some help.

Thanks!

I can't answer your question but hope someone else can - I've been wondering how to do the same thing.
I like the style of your help jpg, though.
Showed the problem well and with a touch of humor!

ok well I am far from a Photoshop expert but there is one way I know that you can use to make curves. Keep in mind, someone else will come along and say 'just press shift+CRTL+A and stand on one foot, and that will create a curve'
It seems I always find ways to do things and there is some way easier way to do it. But until that genius posts Ill give my two cents....

(BTW Im only using PS 5.5 but it was free so I dont care, so some things might be a tad different than your version)

You can use the 'pen tool', if you hold it down there should be more to choose from, you want 'freeform pen tool' That will let you draw any shape and it will place 'anchor points' as you go along. Once youve finished, you can play around with those anchor points (the little squares) and stretch it and bend it. And there are also little lines coming out of the anchor points which let you control the curvey-ness (dont you like my technical words lol)
You have now created a 'path'. In the layers palette, there is the Path folder.
Right click on your work path and you can either make it a selection, or fill it with either a colour or a pattern.
*You can also add anchor points if you want to add a curve or bend where there isnt one. Its the pen with a + beside it, and same thing for the pen with the -, you can delete anchor points.
Hopefully that makes some sort of sense and helps you out a little bit.

Now.....someone else......feel free to post the WAY EASIER way that I just cant either think of or just dont know about lol

yeah ok so I was fooling around just seeing if it was hard or not and it wasnt. I came up with these two real quick, I mean I coulda played around a bit more but you get the idea of what it can make at least.

this is a time to use the wonderful PEN tool... thats right its a bastard to learn BUT once you get the hang of it its the most powerful tool in PS

OMG! so I was right?? theres no fancy shmancy SHIFT+CRTL+ATL+rightclick+Z key??
I ROCK!! lol

Many times for a good curve I find a good fancy font and make that a shape. Then I can tweak it and take the curved pieces I need and work with those.

There are also many free shapes on the net. Adobe's Studio Exchange is a wonderful resource for many PS goodies, and you can access it after you've registered your PS on adobe.com.

animgirl

I'd say that it's better to do everything yourself and not go on the internet to hope someone already did what you are looking for.

I second the pen tool. and with it, learn the shortcuts:

Shift: White arrow - to move an anchor point or rotate levels

alt: lined arrow - to transform a corner anchor into a round anchor, or move levels independantly of the other.

Ctrl: Can't remember right now

I'm sure there is a tutorial that shows how to bring out the pen tool potential

of course there are CTRL ALT and Shift functions!

I swear one day Im just gonna click on every tool and hit CTRL, ALT and Shift with all of them to see what happens!

TOO MANY SHORTCUTS!!

Whoa whoa whoa now.
That was not my aim.
I agree, with your above statement but when you are new it always helps to get a little head start with something that's already made. And if you don't have the time, there are many good resources out there to help you get going. I don't see the harm in browsing to see if someone else has put their hard work out there for you to use and experiment with. Nor do I think we should all depend on everyone else's work. It's just an available resource out there.

animgirl

My God, would you look at all the responses my wee little post has gotten... Thanks, everyone! And hey, ~*~ (what a name!), yes, I LOVED your technical words -- they were right up my alley. Then again, it's 5:50 in the morning here... lol

But anyway, back to the post... I was hoping it wasn't the pen tool... arg! I figured that's what it was (seeing as it's the one tool I've been having some issues with figuring out, Murphy's law is overly prevalent in my life, lol)... hmmm... Darn, I actually have to learn something! Oh well, I'll figure it out... hopefully. I'll come back and post my butterfly again after I mess around with the pen tool a bit...

Thanks again for your help, everyone!

Ok, I'm just going to give you an example of the horrid trainwrecks I come up with... I always have a straight line when I use the pen tool... ... I'll probably get the hang of it, but it's early in the morning, this is only like the third time I've used the pen, and I'm easily frustrated... lol

You need to use the "convert pen tool" to adjust the curvature of your points.

animgirl

Believe it or not, you can use "paint" to make a curved line. It has a nice curve tool.

Then just save the image and do whatever you want with it in Photoshop.