The Blog of Colin Smith (aka kiwicolin)

Vectors Explained
As you know, Photoshop is primarily known for its ability to manipulate pixels, those tiny building blocks that join together so tightly that they seem to form a smooth image, usually a digital photograph. But Photoshop is also handy with the other important family of computer-graphics building blocks: the little guys called vectors.

Vectors are lines, whose curvature, thickness, and length are determined by mathematical formulae. You don’t need to know any math; it’s all done for you. If you want a shape like a circle, your job is to simply draw the circle; Photoshop defines the center point and the radius to create a circle. At that point, you can specify the circle’s color, line thickness, and so on.

It might seem odd to find vector-drawing tools in a pixel-pushing program like Photoshop; vector drawing is usually associated with very different programs, like Illustrator and Freehand. Photoshop can’t create entire vector documents. It uses vector elements and stores them in layers and as paths.  But be grateful that Photoshop offers this feature; it can come in handy in a number of situations. Most commonly vectors are used for cutting something out from its background in a photograph. Check out the car, vectors were used to cut it out.

The pen tool is great for these kinds of cutout tasks because of the clean, controllable, reusable nature of vectors.

Other times you might prefer to use Photoshop’s vector tools are for a large poster, because you can create it small and then scale it up huge without losing any quality. Vectors are great for when you have to change a design many times because you get no degradation each time you change something. Vectors also work great for text and box heavy designs such as postcards, because the edges will print nice and sharp.

In Photoshop (and other Adobe programs), the mathematical name for the lines that determine vectors is Bézier curves.

They’re named after their French creator, Pierre Bézier, who came up with a clever way to make computer-drawn lines bend to their will. A Bezier curve’s direction and angle is determined by the position of little anchor points that lie nearby

Drawing with the pen tool
When it comes to actually creating a path from scratch, the pen tool is the most common option. This tool may look familiar to you. That’s because its almost identical to the pen tool in other Adobe apps like Illustrator, Indesign and Flash.
It’s not, unfortunately, a very natural process, especially to anyone who grew up drawing with markers or crayons. This is because unlike the pencil tool, you are creating your shape with points and handles. You don’t just draw on the page, you have to add points and manipulate them to create your shapes. The pen tool is the way that you add these points and the way you drag the tool as you create the points determines how they will look.
Remember, the fewer points, the smoother a path will be. Imagine moving a pencil in a single motion to produce a smooth curve. If you attempt that same curve with many short strokes, you’ll wind up with not such a smooth curve—and that’s what you get if you add too many points do to path.

Learn how to create paths!

Read entire tutorial here