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Photoshop CS6 Subtract front shape
Ok, this one has me pulling my hair out. I’ve watched a dozen videos. OK well 4 at least and I’m still missing something.
I’m seeing these guys use the shape tool to create a gear shape by combining vector ellipse shapes.
So here’s the basic setup, they start with a large ellipse on the first layer. Then they duplicate it and resize it with the transform tool “ctrl+T” then they duplicate that small ring in a circular pattern around the circumference of the larger ellipse “ctrl+shft+alt+T”. So now we have a big circle with a ring of little circles around it. They then use the path selection tool to select the ring of little circles. Now; with the ring of little circles selected, they go to the “Path Operations” drop down and click “Combine Shapes” and then “Merge Shape Components” and finally “Subtract Front Shape” which subtracts the ring of small circles from the larger circle producing a gear shape.
However whenever I try it, it does take out the little circles but it turns everything gray with a ring of empty little circles cut out of the now uniformly gray screen. It has completely filled the work area / stage with gray less the ring of little circles.
Clearly I’m missing something. Why isn’t it just dropping out the ring of small circles from the larger ring? BTW it is doing nothing to the larger ring.
I’ve tried selecting both layers, large ring and little rings. That doesn’t work at all. Can’t figure out what I’m missingBTW here are two of the videos I’ve been trying to work from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIBDNr24HCQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hdl3ulpU94k
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4 Replies
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The menu commands seem to work better — or at least in a more logical fashion — than the shapes/paths pull-down menus. Try selecting both layers, the selecting Layer>Combine Shapes>Subtract Front Shape
(Actual menu names may be different, I have my Photoshop language set to Finnish)
If you have Illustrator, cutting out shapes from other shapes is a task more suited to illustrator, and I would personally do it there instead.
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I’ll give the menu commands a try. As for illustrator, the ultimate goal of all this is to build a 3d project.
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You can copy and paste paths between Illustrator and Photoshop.
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SHIFT+ F8 is the shortcut in Illustrator for shape tool
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