Photoshop Troubles

[mr ailsbury]

Right!

I'm in

Photoshop CS3 with a piece of A3 paper in landscape trying to make a double page magazine layout.

So I use the pen/line tool to split the page in half which works fine, I then try and add other lines and stuff to the page but as I add new lines the last one i've drawn dissapears

They're still all there in the list of layers on the right hand side and when I select one it re-appears but they refuse to work properly and stay on the actual page together, and when I look on the print preview they're all pazzed out and grey!

Can anyone tell me why its doing this? and tell me how to sort it out, or an easier way of doing it?

cheers

[Mat Smith!]

Use the rulers? lol, you can border in the middle of the page under file i think, might be different if your using mac or whatever, search in youtube about rulers and margins etc.

Mat

[I-LikeMatchesDerFun]

You need to merge the lines down. Just start on the top layer and press Ctrl+E to merge them down until you have only the background layer left. Hope this helps,

Steve

[JonMack]

Use InDesign.

[I-LikeMatchesDerFun]

Use InDesign.

Agreed. So much easier than messing about in Photoshop. If you don't have InDesign, just merge the lines down as I said above.

Steve

[Jitters]

Yep, activate rulers and use the guides or InDesign as mentioned.

BUT

I do know what you're talkiing about. The pen tool is still in shape mode. Annoying as all hell.

Every time you draw and complete a line it creates a new layer. Click on the icon to the right like noted in this pic I've added. Should be good to go then.

Edited December 5, 2008 by Tappets

[Tomm]

What Tappets said.

Also, in the paths palette there should an option for 'stroke path' which will turn your path into a 'real' line (on the active layer). You can also convert it into a selection etc. I suppose this would be useful to know if you had already traced a complex path and didn't want to have to redo it.

[RR_Trials]

what Tom said.

I don't understand why paths are at all useful though and why they cant make it a 'real' object as soon as the lines are drawn because after you have gone through the rigmarole of 'stroking' them, you can't even free-transform them afterwards.

Silly? Or do they have an actual purpose.

So far, in what I have learnt from photoshop the best way to use tools are to understand exactly how they work.

[Jitters]

what Tom said.

I don't understand why paths are at all useful though and why they cant make it a 'real' object as soon as the lines are drawn because after you have gone through the rigmarole of 'stroking' them, you can't even free-transform them afterwards.

Silly? Or do they have an actual purpose.

I've found that paths are quite useful, but for particular purposes. One case might be preparing them to save as a clipping path so that your image or artwork can be imported into other applications where the background can be automatically removed without all the crappy jagged edges that the auto detect options that Quark and InDesign have. I use paths daily for many different things.

In general, you're right though. They're still kind of clunky in Photoshop, as they seem to be a newer element that has crept over from dedicated vector apps like Illustrator and Freehand where they are much more manageable.

Anyway, keep messing with 'em and you'll find that they can be quite powerful for different things.

Cheers!