First,
let's open a new image. Chose file from menu and new image. (Fig
.1) The dialog box will appear. Match my
settings here and your new image should be open in front of you. (Fig.2
)
Click in the little box in the bottom of the color palette and put a check in the box. Then set your foreground color to black and your background color to white.
Leaving the lock box unchecked allows each tool to have its own colors and can be confusing for new users and old ! LOL However it does has its advantages, you can read more about using this feature at the Toybox. |
Grab
your Preset Shapes tool, set it to rounded rectangle and match my settings.
(Fig. 3) Draw out your shape on the canvas
leaving some room all around the shape since we are going to add a few more
to it. It may be difficult to see the shape real well because of the little
squares on the ends of your shape. This is normal. (Fig
3A) They are "handles" so to speak that allow you to
manipulate the size and dimensions of your shape. This will not be covered here,
but at the end of this tutorial I will add a couple of links to tutorials that
use the node editing feature.
Now, for the ends we need to make some circles, however there is no circle in
your preset shapes so you need to select the ellipse, leave the foreground
and background colors the same, also make sure that antialias and create
as vector are checked. Hold down the shift key, start
on an end of the rectangle and draw out a circle on your canvas but not
as wide as the entire rectangle, only about a quarter of the size, as you see
in my screen shot here. Holding down the shift key while drawing an ellipse
constrains the object to make it a circle instead of the ellipse (oval). Then
choose edit, copy. (You will see no change.) Then choose edit
and paste as new vector selection, position it just below the first one
you made. (Fig.4)
Then
choose edit and repeat, place that one on the other end even with
the first circle you made. Repeat this step until you have a total of 4 (four)
circles that resemble mine on the right. If you don't see your shapes listed
click the (+) sign beside layer 1 to expand your layers palette to
see the shapes contained within the layer. (Fig 5)
|
If
you are not happy with the placement of your shapes choose the node editing
tool and move them in to a position that you like. |
Now
left click on the rounded rectangle object in layer 2 to make
it the active object, then right click it again and choose rename. Rename
the shape to center bone. Then right click the first ellipse layer
and choose rename again and rename it to top right end. Now repeat the
renaming of layer steps until you have renamed every shape/layer appropriately
to match mine that you see here. Left side is what your layers palette looks
like before all of the renaming (Fig 6) and
the second shows after you have named them each. (Fig 7)
Next
we are going to group some of the objects to make it a little easier to edit
the properties of the shape. Hold down your shift key and click
the bottom left end layer, then while still holding down the shift
key click the bottom right end layer, repeat with this
with the two "top end" layers as well. Remember to hold down
your shift key while clicking them, as they are selected they should appear
in bold type. Once they are selected right click and choose the
group option from the menu. (Fig.8)
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