New England Sun-Times

When you use Adobe Photoshop to create graphics for your business and its clients, your imagery consists of pixels, tiny square elements that make up the gridded mosaic underlying bitmapped images. Photoshop also supports vector, or path-based, elements, including live type and other forms of imagery. When you want to convert a bitmapped element to vector paths, you can use several techniques to create elements more reminiscent of a drawing program like Adobe Illustrator than of an image editor like Photoshop. Press "P" to select the Pen tool. Open the "Window" menu and choose "Paths" to reveal the Paths panel. In the Options bar, choose the standard version of the Pen tool to draw Bezier curves and precise straight lines, the Freeform version to create a loosely drawn result reminiscent of pen on paper, or the Magnetic Pen to draw following the sharp transitions of color or brightness in your image. Draw your vector paths so they represent a traced