How to set Constrained Angles while drawing and holding shift?

[FrancescaSF]

Hi! I'm trying to draw circuits. I LOVE that there's an option to draw straight lines continuously now in Photoshop by holding down shift.

What I'd love is the ability to hold down shift and another key to both set the line as straight AND constrain the angle to 90 degrees.

It would be great to be able to specify other user angles as well.

Is there another method to do this that I'm missing?

Unfortunately every time I restart the drawing there's kind of a paint blob where I begin, so drawing discontinuously is not as clean.

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

Question:

Is there a reason you are using Photoshop and not Illustrator?

Unless I'm misunderstanding what you are doing, holding the shift key for straight lines is not new. However, to draw continuous lines at angles, I would use the Pen tool, create a path, and add a stroke to the path (an option on the Paths panel). The shift key constrains the path to 45 degrees. You can keep the path to change the stroke settings later on if necessary.

This is the same general technique I would use in Illustrator, except the path stroke is handled differently.

Here is a link to an Illustrator symbol library:

https://www.codezebra.com/ElectricalSymbols.php

I don't know if this would help your needs, but here is a link to a CAD plugin:

https://www.hotdoor.com/

Here is the Illustrator setting for setting smart guides at various angles:

[jane-e]

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@FrancescaSF wrote:

It would be great to be able to specify other user angles as well. Is there another method to do this that I'm missing?

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In addition to what @Dave Creamer of IDEAS said, when you are using Illustrator's Construction Guides you can type any angle you want into the dialog shown above and then constrain lines to 17°, 132°, 214°, etc.

Paths can be copied from Illustrator to Photoshop and vice versa. Illustrator is a drawing package, so it has more advanced drawing tools.

Jane

[FrancescaSF]

I'm sorry, I thought I was in the Photoshop forum, not the Illustrator forum. Yes, there is a reason I'm trying to do this in Photoshop. These linear elements are constructed around many dozens of layers on various blend modes and influenced by their shapes. I want to be able to do this intuitively, and as raster graphics, rather than attempting to guess what I want in Illustrator and import it into the original art.

[jane-e]

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@FrancescaSF wrote:

Yes, there is a reason I'm trying to do this in Photoshop.

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You can put in a feature request to the product developers for them to consider. At the top of the Photoshop forum, tag your post as "Ideas" instead of "Discussions". 

What I personally do for a workaround in situations like yours is to create an Illustrator image with the same pixel size as the PS image, then place the PS image into the AI file. I draw the paths in AI, then copy them back into PS. 

Jane

Forum volunteer

[FrancescaSF]

I'm still hoping there's some kind of in-Photoshop workaround and want to leave others a chance to chime in. Perhaps there's something with guides I haven't explored

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

Did you read my entire post? I told you how to do it in Photoshop. 

[FrancescaSF]

Ah yes, I see. My apologies, I did not make it clear I'm trying to do this in raster rather than vector graphics. UNLESS, and this is a big unless, there's something I'm missing in terms of realtime preview of what something is going to look like with a stroke or fill on it. At the moment one of the things that's happening is, when I try to do it using the pen tool, I can't get any realtime bead on what it looks like. I'll do a "stroke" on it, and then need to adjust one line, and then everything is "off" again and I have to go to the layer where I rendered the stroke, delete the whole thing, and reapply the stroke. This is entirely likely to be due to my lack of facility with the pen tool. Any thoughts on that?

The electrical symbols are pretty cool! To be clear, I'm not trying to draw ACTUAL circuits but idealized representations of futuristic circuits suitable to science fiction illustration. I love that people are ready to help me draw the real deal with CAD!

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

You pretty much described the path workflow. No real time preview. 

If you want a less artistic path but one you can visualize better, you can draw a shape with the Pen tool rather than a path (using no fill). This will give you a better idea of what it will look like. You can still edit the shape. Then you can change the shape to a path and use the Brush tool for a nicer effect. 

[Trevor.Dennis]

Are yopu doing this with the brush tool or line tool?

Are you using a Windows or Mac system?

If you are using the Line tool and hold down Shift while dragging out the line, it will snap to 90° or 45° depending on which is nearest.

Another option is to create your lines perpendicular to the document borders, and use Free Transform to rotate to a precise angle. Note that I have used the grid on the left end of the Options bar to designate the point the line should rotate around.  I find this a bit small and fiddly nowadays.

If you are using the brush tool, then you have the option of using the grid.

Click at the start of the line on a grid intersection, and hold shift as you click on the second grid intersection. 

You can continuously relocate the grid origin by dragging from the corner of the rulers.

Tip: my preferred method of changing the grid spacing is to us Image Size with Resample turned off. i.e. doubling the Resolution in the Image Size dialog will halve the grid density.

I asked what platform you are using. If it is Windows you have the option of using the Lazy Nezumi Pro plugin.  LNP has dozens of features, one of which is to constrain the angle.

[FrancescaSF]

Ooo, this is potentially very close to what I'm trying to do and I will experiment with this. This comes up surprisingly often in my job. I have been using the brush tool, but I will experiment with the line tool. 

I am using Mac primarily, though I do have access to a PC so it's good to know re: the plugin!

These are examples of the types of things I've been doing -- and using a number of laborious and possibly foolish techniques to make it happen -- it may be that ultimately jane-e is right and this is a feature request for the paintbrush.

[Root5E62]

Rotate the canvas using the rotate view tool (R) by whatever angle you need, then when you draw straight lines using the shift key it will be at the angle you have rotated to, then rotate the view back to 0 again.