silvorus

Howdy,

HELP

I'm probably using all the wrong terms, but I want to draw a simple circle. I also want to be able to determine and vary the border width.

Also, please feel free to help me with the correct PS termonology.

Mike

austizmo

Welcome Billy! All you need to do is make a circular selection with the marquee tool. And stroke it.

First, grab the circlular marquee from the upper left hand corner of your tools pallette, hold down shift, and draw your circle. Then go to Edit-> Stroke and enter the width of the stroke/border.

Welles

Hi billyz

Well, one way is to use the oval marquee tool (red arrow points to it). Choose the tool which might be hidden 'behind' the rectangular marquee tool as it shares the same placement in the tools. If the rectangular marquee tool is showing click and hold for a second and the other 'hidden' tools will be shown and available for choosing. Hold down the shift key as you draw out the marquee (select marquee tool, mouse click, hold down the mouse button and drag) and the marquee will be constrained to a circle. Then go to the menu bar Edit > Stroke... and the stroke dialog will appear giving you the options which you seek.

The picture I've included should help, I think.

Josh

Never use selections to make circles; they don't make them perfectly round (look at attachment). Use path strokes instead.

Ferlin

Josh I agree with you that that is a better way and -- when you use paths you have to decide what you will stroke it with. Like if you use the paintbrush tool you have to set the size and softness - hardness and opacity- but the paths circle shape will give you a perfect circle.Paths are a little more involved for a beginner.

MsOz

You're right, Ferlin, paths are somewhat complicated for beginners. Also, many times selections do a more than adequate job for the situation.

Here is a selection circle created at 4x6" at 300dpi, stroked 3px from the center, reduced to approximately 1x1" at 72dpi, and then enlarged by 300% for the larger outer circle. As you see, the severe angulation of josh's example did not occur...

Like anything else, there are usually at least 3 ways to do something in Photoshop, with some techniques working better than others. But, that seldom creates "Never" or "Always" situations on how to approach the problem...If circular selections were so worthless as to "never" warrant their use, they wouldn't be one of the first tools on the PS toolbar, eh?

Welles

billyz,

Each of us is correct here. As MsOz points out selections work just fine in many cases and are the easier solution. Josh is right that extremely wide strokes will show the flaw in the technique and is overall less desirable than using Paths. So here is a quick tutorial on how to use the path technique.

First you select the Ellipse tool (1) and go up to the tool options bar and select Paths (2). Now hold down the shift to constrain the oval to a perfect circle and click and drag your circle. You will see a little line representing the path. Now figure out what size stroke (width of border) you want and the color and set it up by choosing the brush tool (3) and selecting the color (3). When you select the brush you have to specify the size in the tool options bar which appears upon selecting the brush tool. Whew! Now go to the Paths Palette and the little button (4) is stroke with brush. Your path will be stroked with the brush size and color you chose in step three. One additional tip, if you hold down the option (alt) key when you click on the 'stroke path with brush' button a whole menu of options appears.

Cheers!

Josh

Yeah, but now you're comparing apples with oranges, I mean you compare a thick line with a thin one, that's why you don't see angulation.
If you want to use selections, that's ok... but then fill a selection and cut out the center, then you'll have a smooth thick line.
Another thing you have to be aware of; avoid using 'expand' and 'contract' if you want a smooth circular selection.
Try this; create a circular selection of 100 using 300dpi and expand or contract 20 pixels, you'll see what I mean...

Where do you read that we should never use circular selections? [confused]

It is important though to point out some possible problems you could run into.

Welles ,great short tutorial, my compliments! [righton]

One comment: the user has to make sure that the spacing for the brush is set to 1% (under 'Brush Tip Shape'), otherwise there might be a surprise (extreme example) (attachment)

retired_paddza

This is generally how you build using marquee techniques. Set up guides in your document and build your graphics, then move them into position where you want them. That way you can use multiple marquees rather than...

...than expand and contract. These features are basically useless above values of one or two pixels. I swear, not a day goes by I don't hear this question: "How come my circle looks like an octogon when I expand and fill" Blah.

DPI has no bearing on pixel operations. The key element is the useful threshold of the expand and contract function. It is unable to do the math very well after a couple of pixels in either direction. But you'll get the same results at 10dpi as you will at 1000dpi.

Uhm, here?

Josh

Learn to read man, I never said that.
I wrote: "Try this; create a circular selection of 100 using 300dpi and expand or contract 20 pixels, you'll see what I mean... "
The reason why I came of with exact numbers was that people would see the same like me using the same 'settings'.
If you were that smart you would have corrected me on dpi which is incorrect. It should have been ppi

Again you can't read (like in a different thread). I never used the word selections, I used the word 'circles', the same circles billyz was talking about in his first post, the same circles that are shown throughout this thread, but again you didn't take time to read, put you rather preferred to assume that I'm just plain stupid.

I have a good suggestion for you Mindbender; spend a few hours on this site http://www.learntoread.com

8))