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Question

Merging straight and curved lines with pen tool

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
September 18, 2023
3 replies
2882 views

I'm wondering if someone could help me. I have been trying to get curved and straight lines to merge at the end of this shape (left hand corner) but nothing I do seems to work. Any help is appreciated!

macOS

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michaelr87005377Author

Participating Frequently

Thank you both! Another question is merging two separate curved lines where the paths meet. As you can see below the curved line doesnt smoothly connect at the top. How could I resolve this?

Trevor.Dennis

Community Expert

This is something that Illustrator really does have an advantage over Photoshop, as you can ask it to join points that are close to each other. As we have stated back up the thread, for strokes to work properly you absolutely have to close the path, so in this case you have to kind of fake it.

So starting with and open path. If we convert this to a Shape layer with a stroke but no fill, we'll have the un-joined look we see in your second screen shot. Note I have used a Guide so we can see which two points are vertically aligned.

I'll use the Pen tool to close the path. You'll see the appropriate icons for Join and Close as you hover over the existing end points. The resulting closed path will look weired, but we can ignore that.

BTW Quick Tip: If not already set, check Auto Add/Delete in the options bar with the Pen Tool selected. This makes life much easier.

It means you can hover over a point and see the minus sign next to the pen tool icon.

Click to delete the errant point, and the path will be closed, but look crazy

Now hold down the Alt/Opt key and drag that top right handle to correct the work path shape.

Another Quick Tip: Turn on the grid so you can get as close to perfect symmetry as possible. If you drag from the rulers intersection to the uppermost point, that will become the new zero/zero location making the grid symmetrical to the workpath axis. So long as the hands align, both sides of the workpath will be equal.

Does that make sense?

If you set the pen tool to Shape in the options bar it will create the shape layer as you lay down the path points

If you choose to make a path, you can then turn it into a shape layer with

Layer > New Fill Layer > Solid Color

This is not what you want so select the shape layer and select one of the shape tools. It doesn't mater which one.

This will bring up the fill and stroke options in the Options Bar

Turn fill off (the red diagonal) and stroke to the color and size you require.

Job done.

michaelr87005377Author

Participating Frequently

Thanks alot! This has helped me. Thank you you for your time!

Trevor.Dennis

Community Expert

Further to what Brett has told you, I am not sure how you managed to get effect, but like Brett also said, I stronly suspect that you did not close the path. When you join the end and start points you'll see a circle next to the Pen Tool icon. Don't click to close untill you see that icon.

With that done, it doesn't matter how you have the stroke set (inside, centre, outside) it will always give you nice sharp corners.

This might help you going forward:

This set of video tutorials by fellow Community Expert Michael Hoffman are the best I have ever come across. There are five in all with the others linked from the first one.

BrettN

Community Manager

I'm not sure what steps you took to get to where you are at, so I'm not sure exactly what step you may have missed or why it is not working now. Photoshop doesn't really see a differnece between points which have curve handles and those which are corners, it should be able to merge them just fine.

Generally, if you are creating such a shape with the Pen tool, you should be able to close the path by simply clicking on the starting point (wait for the cursor to include a small circle icon before clicking to make sure you are aligned correctly).

If you complete a shape without closing it and want to close it at a later time, you can do so by selecting the pen tool again and clicking on either the first or last point to select it. You will see a special cursor indicating continuing a shape, a square with a horizontal line passing behind it. Next, click on the opposite point, when you see the small circle icon. This will generate a new line to connect the two points and close the shape. This line will likely have a strange curve in it, so deleting the extra point by clicking when minus sign icon appears will clean things up. The curve should correct itself and you should have a proper closed shape.

Photoshop does not include the same path editing tools that you see in Illustrator for doing things like simply merging vector points.

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