I've spent an obscene portion of my holiday googling how to color a line in Photoshop 2022, so any help would be appreciated!
When I drew this line, the pen tool was set to create a shape, not a mask, which I realize I should have adjusted first, but it's still weird to me that I would have no ability to edit a shape either. All options to either stroke the path or edit the stroke of the shape are unavailable, and the only options for converting the mask I can find are to convert it into a smart shape (which led to several other dead ends), a frame, or rasterized layer.
This is all I see in the path window when the layer is selected:
And here is what shows up for properties:
The vector mask cannot be deselected.
How do I disable this feature? All I want to do is edit the color of the lines that I've now based my whole design on.
Explore related tutorials & articles
4
Replies
You can not set the Pen tool to a mask mode just to Path, Shape, and Pixel mode. However, when you set it to Shape mode what it actually does is create a Fill layer with a Vector Layer mask. The mask is not shown the Layers Palette. Just a shape layer icon is added to the shape layers Content Thumbnail bottom right corner in the layer Palette. When a shape layer is the current Photoshop target layer you can see the vector Layer mask in the Paths palette and the path should outline the shape in the Image displayed. So the Shape layer only property in the Properties Palette is the Vector Layer mask. You can change the Layer's Fill in the Pen Tool Tool Option bar Shape Fill option Empty, Solid Color, Gradient, or Patter. You can add a normal Layer mask and target the normal layer mask an paint on the mask. There will be two mask in the Properties panel. However you can only change the Fill layer content in the Tool Option Bar. Its not possible to target the fill layer content and paint on it even targeting the shape layer's thumbnail in the layers palette.
"how to color a line"
If your goal is to draw line in Photoshop and to assign color to it then yuse either path drawing mode or shape drawing mode with shape fill turned off. Choose color and thikness for Stroke from the Options bar and enjoy vector line that can be modified.
You edit the path of a shape layer with Photoshop vector tools. No matter how the shape layer was created. Here I have a shape layer I created with the Pen tool. I just create a shape layer by laying out a closet path using four control points. You can see the Shape's Path the blue line overlay. I switch to the curvature Pen tool and edit a top line segment. I then switched to the Pen + point add tool and added a control point to a bottom line segment. Switched to the direct select tool and moved the control point I just added. Switching to the Convert Path point I removed the curves moving the control point created. Etc, etc, etc...
AdChoices