Am I just stupid or….. Simple question ( I hope )

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Posted By
fixitman
Oct 9, 2005
Views
226
Replies
6
Status
Closed
I mostly use Photoshop CS2 (Windows xp) for photo processing. In the past for all my drawing needs I have used Corel Draw.Anyone who has used Corel knows it is a great drawing program, but it has a nasty habit of locking up and dumping your work. So I decided that it was time to start learning the drawing tools in photo shop and decided I would do an ad layout with it. So as luck would have it I get stuck on the second step! I used the shape tool to draw a rectangle with radiused corners. So far so good. Next I wanted to thicken the outline of this rectangle. I could find no way to do so. So I went to the help menu where it says I am suposed to have a pop up diagnal. I have looked high and low and can not find it. What am I missing here?

Regards,
Randy

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JS
John_Slate
Oct 9, 2005
The help menu is usually pretty explicit.

Exactly what page of the help menu said you were "suposed to have a pop up diagnal"?
DM
dave_milbut
Oct 9, 2005
once you "stroke" a shape you can’t change it. you need to delete and redo it. you really should be looking at illustrator if you’re going to concentrate on drawing rather than image manipulation. illy is more closely aligned with corel draw.
GD
glen_deman
Oct 9, 2005
You can also try using shape layers. Select the rounded rectangle tool, and set it to shape layers (this option is in the upper left corner). Draw out the shape, and apply a layer style to it. Choose stroke. Now you can go back and change the width of the stroke as needed.
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fixitman
Oct 9, 2005
John,
Pretty much anything under "shape tools options" I can not seem to locate.

Dave,
Would not care about redoing it as long as I could apply the line thickness I need.

Glen,
I tried your sugestion I can get the layer style to apply although none of them are what I need (a solid line), but when I go to the edit menu both stoke and fill are greyed out and not acsessable

Regards,
Randy
Y
YrbkMgr
Oct 9, 2005
There are several ways to achieve what you want, depending on what you want to do.

When you select the shape tool, at the top in the options bar, you have three choices on the left for what type of shape this will be – a layer with a mask of your shape (thereby allowing you to change fill colors on the fly), a Path, or "filled Pixels". This latter is simply a raster image based on your shape.

What *I* always do, is I create a path. I find it the most versitile. Once you draw your path, you can add your stroke in a variety of ways. One is to add a new blank layer, control click on the path, and then Edit|Stroke.
GD
glen_deman
Oct 9, 2005
I’m actually not sure what effect you’re after; I’m assuming it’s a rounded rectangle shape with an outline? If so, here’s a screenshot of something like that.

<http://img34.imageshack.us/my.php?image=untitled17gt.gif>

When you select the stroke option, you control the settings there, rather than going to the Edit menu.

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