When you see a cool design that was created in Photoshop, you might wonder what tool was used to make it. You'll invariably discover that the design was created with Photoshop's Custom Shape Tool.
Custom shapes, you think? The only shape designs you've seen look like stock art. But this robust tool can offer so much more, and its versatility is often underutilized. So, here is a beginner's guide to using the Custom Shape Tool in Adobe Photoshop.
What Is the Custom Shape Tool in Photoshop?
Photoshop’s Custom Shape Tool is a shape tool that allows you to create non-standard, customized shapes. While Photoshop’s various shape tools offer basic shapes that you can create, edit, and merge together—such as the Rectangle and Ellipse tools—the Custom Shape Tool gives you many more options.
Not only does the Custom Shape Tool provide a library of readymade shapes of sorts, but it’s also easy to create your own custom shape to use with the tool. You can add your own custom designs to the shape library for use at any time.
Once you’ve added a shape to your design, you can easily turn the design into a pattern that you can add to any surface in Photoshop.
Where Is the Custom Shape Tool in Photoshop?
From the default view of Photoshop, the Custom Shape Tool is hidden in plain sight. The Custom Shape Tool can be found in the left-hand toolbar as one of many tools nestled under a default tool icon. Find the default shape tool—usually the Rectangle Tool—and click and hold the icon until more tools are revealed.
You'll recognize the Custom Shape Tool by the little splatter pattern of its icon, almost like a puddle. Click the icon to activate the Custom Shape Tool. Once you’ve activated it, you can hold U on your keyboard to select the tool later.
How to Use Custom Shape Tool in Photoshop
Using the Custom Shape Tool is simple, much like one of Photoshop’s other shape tools. When your Custom Shape Tool is active, the Upper Settings Bar along the top of your workspace changes to fit its parameters.
Step 1: Choose Your Shape
The most important part of the Custom Shape Tool is choosing the shape itself. To pick a shape from Photoshop's library, go to the Custom Shape picker menu.
Once you click on the dropdown menu, you'll see a whole host of premade options. These shapes range from picture frames and signage to nature elements, text bubbles, hearts, and squares. You’ll also have any self-made custom shapes in this library.
Step 2: Adjust Your Settings
After you pick your shape style, you should pick the color for both the Fill and Stroke. Fill is the color that will be inside your shape. Stroke is the color that will outline your shape.
These two options can be found in the top left-hand corner of your workspace. By clicking on each corresponding swatch, you will see a dropdown menu emerge.
From there, you can choose a hue for your Fill or Stroke. You can also choose to have no color at all. To leave your Fill or Stroke blank, pick the white box with a red strike-through. Additionally—if you don't like any of these color swatches—you can also pick a custom color from the Color Picker. It's found on the right-hand side of your dropdown menu.
Do you want to use multiple custom colors at once? Here's how to create a color palette in Photoshop.
Step 3: Draw Your Shape
Now that you've familiarized yourself with the Custom Shape Tool, it's time to draw. First, make sure that your Custom Shape Tool is still active. Then click and drag your cursor across the page to draw your shape. You'll see the outline in blue. Hold Shift while dragging to constrain the proportions.
Once your shape is roughly the size that you want it, release your cursor. The blue lines will automatically fill with color, so long as you didn't have your Fill option set to the red strike-through before you started.
You'll also see small "markers" placed at strategic points along this blue outline that still surrounds your shape. You can use these markers to adjust your shape, so let's do that right now.
Step 4: Customize Your Shape
To adjust your shape, press A or go to the left-hand toolbar and click on the Direct Selection Tool. Its icon looks like a little white arrow, not to be confused with the Path Selection Tool nestled under the same icon.
The Direct Selection Tool allows you to adjust individual anchor points along a path. Once the Direct Selection Tool is active, click anywhere on your shape, and you'll see all the blue "markers" turn white. These are your anchor points.
To adjust an anchor point, click on one of the white dots—it will turn blue again to show you that it's selected. Click and drag over multiple anchor points to select more than one at a time. To customize your shape, drag any of the selected anchor points to a new place.
When the anchor points are where you want them to be, release your cursor. The shape will automatically adjust to this new path. Keep on doing this until all of your points are adjusted how you want them.
Step 5: Adjust Your Anchor Points
When you click on an anchor point, you might notice that two little "handles" will stick out on either side of it. These handles are your drag control points. When you adjust them, they alter the shape and curvature of your anchor point instead of moving it from point A to B.
To adjust these handles, click on the anchor point you want to adjust. Then hover on the handle you want to adjust, and it will turn blue. Click and drag on the handle to move it around. You'll notice the individual curve of your shape—associated with that specific anchor point—will change with it.
All your other anchor points will remain the same. You’ll have to drag each anchor handle individually to make these changes, as there isn’t a way to do this globally.
If you don't like the look of a new curve, you can simply go Edit > Undo Drag Control Point. Photoshop will revert your changes.
Step 6: Adjust Your Stroke
Now that you've adjusted the shape of your flower, it's time to finesse the Stroke.
Make sure your shape is selected with the Direct Selection Tool (A) or by selecting the shape layer in the layers panel while the Custom Shape Tool (U) is active.
Next, go to the Upper Settings Bar, and click on the dropdown menu for the Stroke Size. By dragging the slider back and forth across the bar, you can make your Stroke line look thinner or thicker.
You can also change the Type of stroke by clicking on the dropdown menu next to it. Here, you can choose a consistent, dashed, or dotted line style. You can also change align, caps, and corner settings here.
How to Make a Custom Shape in Photoshop
If Photoshop’s custom shape library doesn’t offer the shape you want, you can easily create your own. You can save your homemade shape in the library for future use along with the rest of the shape library.
To create a custom shape, draw an image using the Brush Tool (B) or create a black silhouette from an image by using the Threshold adjustment under the Image tab. Once you have an image or shape that looks great in black, use the Magic Wand Tool (W) to select the area by clicking on it.
With the black part of the image selected—this is what your custom shape will look like—go to Window > Paths to open the paths panel. Then click Make work path from selection at the bottom of the Paths panel.
This will turn the marching ants into blue path lines with anchors and add a path layer called Work Path. Then, go to Edit > Define Custom Shape. Name your shape in the dialog box and click OK.
Now your custom-made shape will appear in the Custom Shape Tool library, and you can use it just like any other custom shape.
Use the Custom Shape Tool to Design Something Cool
With Photoshop’s Custom Shape Tool, you can add shapes to your work that are fun, professional, or totally customized. The shape library has a great variety of shapes to choose from, but we’ve also shown you how easy it is to create shapes from scratch. This tool is an overlooked tool that can transform your artwork in Photoshop.