“Add to” Paths of Glory

Nate Simpson just posted an article entitled “Paths to Glory” on his project blog (if you haven’t visited Project Waldo yet… do it!). Nate’s comic is supercool, and I’ve really enjoyed following his progress. When he decided to blog about his method for creating word balloons, I couldn’t help but think “hey, that’s how I was doing them just a few months back!”.

However since then, I’ve improved somewhat on the original process, mainly by employing the “Add to Path Area” option. I emailed Nate about this, and at his behest have decided to make this little tutorial available for everyone. So without further ado, here’s how the word balloons for that latest four or five pages of Gone to Ground were created!

Before we start, I’m using Adobe Photoshop CS4, but as far as I am aware, the tools and options used in this tutorial are available in older versions of the software. Please, if you discover different – email me and let me know!

Click on any image for an enlargement

STEP ONE I select the Pen Tool, but instead of creating a Path per se, I set the Pen Tool to Shape Layers (check 01_penTool.jpg, in the top left corner, the tool options bar, you can see that the Shape Layer option is selected – it’s the icon of the square w/o the pen inside). I create the word balloon shape (minus the “tail”) by clicking four points and dragging out the controllers to get a nice organic shape. You’ll notice that a new shape layer has appeared in the Layers Palette as a Shape Layer. It includes a color picker and aVector Mask in the shape of the path we just made.

STEP TWO Next I stick with the Pen Tool/Shape Layers combo, but I make sure to select the “Add To Path Area” option. What this does is allow for a second path to be made on the same Shape Layer as the currently selected one – in this case our balloon shape. If you’ve somehow deselected the path and want to Add to Path, all you need to do is click on the Vector Mask indicator on the Shape Layer in the Layers Palette. So now we can create the tail; I’ve kept the shapes separate here, just to demonstrate how this works, but you can actually create it right over top of the balloon shape.

STEP THREE Now I use the Path Selection Tool to select the tail and then click & drag it so that it overlaps the balloon shape.

STEP FOUR Using the Convert Point Tool I can now adjust the points of the tail in order to get the curvature I am looking for. There’s no limit here; if you’re doing robot speech, maybe try a straight tail, or a lightning bolt’d one!

STEP FIVE The balloon we made is black (or at least whichever colour you’ve got selected as the primary), which is going to suck for reading black text! So over in the Layers Palette, I double-click on the color picker and change it to white. Notice that BOTH the balloon and the tail shapes change colour… this is because although they are created using separate paths, they are still a singular Shape Layer.

STEP SIX Now I can double-click in the Shape Layer (avoiding the icons and text) to bring up the Layer Style Window. Here I select Stroke and adjust my settings as I see fit. Notice again that the stroke is applied to the Shape Layer as a whole, and not the individual shapes created by our two paths. You can also try other effects, like Drop Shadow!

STEP SEVEN At this point, the power of using multiple paths/shapes should start to become obvious! Using the Path Selection Tool on that Shape Layer allows you to select the tail OR the balloon (and using the Direct Selection Tool allows you to choice singular editing points – FYI). You can edit the placement of the tail by selecting it and then Edit > Free Transform Path, or Edit > Transform Path > Flip Horizontal, etc. Now you can reuse the same basic balloon as a starter for ANY dialog!