Pencil Tool
With the Pencil Tool you can create a hand-drawn look by drawing freehand lines as if you were drawing on paper.
Pencil ToolWith the Pencil Tool you can create a hand-drawn look by drawing freehand lines as if you were drawing on paper.
The tool is perfect for drawing freeform lines with a hard edge, and is used for sketching and digital inking.
As you draw, nodes are created automatically along the stroke which can optionally be smoothed as you draw by enabling the Stabiliser feature. A Sculpt mode also lets you reform or continue your pencil stroke at any time, although you can use the Node Tool to edit too. When using a combination of sculpting and Use Fill, you can form conjoined pencil strokes that can take a fill with the stroke's concave area.
Line styles (e.g., dashed or brush texture) can be applied using the Stroke panel. For brush textures, pick a brush from the Brushes panel.
The following settings can be adjusted using a vertical tool slider:
Width—controls the width of the line using a vertical slider next to the tool's location. Slide up or down to set the width.The following settings can be adjusted from the context toolbar:
Keep selected—when enabled (default), the new shape layer will be selected on creation. When disabled, the new object is deselected which prevents it from adopting the next object’s stroke/fill properties.
Sculpt—When enabled, any selected pencil stroke can be reshaped or continued; the former by drawing new start and end stops anywhere along the pencil stroke, the latter by drawing from either stroke end node.
Use Fill—When enabled, the concave area of the line is filled with the colour you select from the revealed Fill colour swatch as you draw.
Auto Close—when enabled, you can close the curve when the cursor approaches close to the same curve's start node.
For rope mode—drag the stroke end by a 'rope' to smooth the stroke but introduce sharp corners at increasing rope Length (radius) values by redirecting the slackened rope. Set value via vertical slider. For window mode—smooths the stroke by averaging sampled input positions within a Window whose size is configurable. Set value via vertical slider.