The Pen Tool (Paths)

Inking is, technically, retracing your original pencil lines to make them crisper and printable. And the tool that best for this task the best (and unfortunately the most complex) is the Pen Tool .

This is essentially a vector tool. If you’ve ever handled programs like Corel Draw!, Adobe Illustrator or Macromedia’s Freehand, then you’re familiar with what this tool can do.

The image below (A5) shows you the Pen Tool’s Options Bar in Photoshop. I’ve indicated the two types, the basic Pen Tool and the Freeform Pen Tool. Basically, the Pen Tool uses anchor nodes* to create its shape while the Freeform Pen Tool is used in freehand drawing.

Using the pen tool means you’re going to be working with paths. Paths are lines that you can control the shape and size of.

*Anchor nodes are used to place specific points, they have extensions called Direction nodes that are used to curve a path.

Practical use for this tool alongside with the Brush Tool can be seen in the inking tutorial.