Known Participant

P: (Win) Photoshop 27.9.1 Line Tool: Arrow shaft protrudes through arrowhead at small arrowhead widths

Forum|Forum|14 hours ago
August 24, 2026
4 replies
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When using the Photoshop Line Tool with an arrowhead, the rectangular line shaft can protrude through the sloping sides of the arrowhead if a small arrowhead width is used. This creates two small but clearly visible spikes on either side of the arrowhead.

Photoshop version:
27.9.1

OS:
Windows 11

Steps to reproduce:

Create a new document.
Select the Line Tool in Shape mode.
Make sure both Fill and Stroke are enabled.
Set the Stroke width for example to 34 px.
Enable an arrowhead at the end of the line.
Set the arrowhead width to 3 px and draw an arrow.
Zoom in on the transition between the shaft and the arrowhead.

At this point, the two bottom corners of the rectangular shaft protrude through the diagonal sides of the arrowhead.

Changing only the arrowhead width from 3 px to 5 px makes the artifacts disappear.

Expected result:
The shaft should be fully contained within the arrowhead, and the arrowhead should have clean, uninterrupted diagonal edges regardless of the selected arrowhead width.

Actual result:
At small arrowhead widths, the rectangular shaft becomes visible through both sides of the arrowhead, producing two small spikes.

Real-world example:
I encountered the issue while creating mountain labels for a 38,000-pixel-wide high-resolution panorama. The attached screenshot shows the artifact in actual use. I have also attached a minimal example demonstrating the problem independently of the panorama.

Example file: PS-Arrow-Bug

davescm

Community Expert

@TUX24170726lkc9 The line tool draws a rectangle so you can draw around the edges in different ways using the stroke options.
Go to line options - change the stroke to Outside and half the width i.e use 17 outside rather than 34 centered.

Dave

T

TUX24170726lkc9Author

Known Participant

Thanks, have you tested it with my example file? I have not drawn a rectangle but only used the arrowhead option. Increasing the width of the arrows solves it for me. This behaviour seems unintended, therefore my report.

davescm

Community Expert

‘...have you tested it with my example file? I have not drawn a rectangle...’

Yes, I did use your file. When you draw a line with the line tool, you are actually drawing a 1 px wide rectangular path. You therefore have the options to stroke around that rectangle, inside, centered on the path or outside the path. The default is centered on the path. By changing it to ‘outside’ and halving the stroke value you can add the arrow head at the original size without the rectangle appearing outside it.

Below is one of your arrows. I changed the stroke from 34 to 17 and also change its alignment from centered on the path to outside the path. I did not alter the arrow settings.
The left arrow is yours , the right is a duplicate with the altered stroke settings.