Getting straight pencil lines in PS - need tips

[Ignatz]

This is kind of hard to describe but I'll give it a try and hopefully some of you might understand my situation.
One of the problems I find myself against many times is illustrating machinery, vehicles, buildings (Anything that has straight lines etc.) in PS using a Wacom.
For instance, when I do a freehand machinery illustration (with pencil and paper) I can pretty much get the desired results that I want. One of the reasons I can get a freehand sketch with good straight lines (no rulers) is because I have the freedome of rotating the paper around to accomadate my arm's natural stroke.
However, when Im using a Wacom tablet on PS I dont have the choice of rotating the canvas on the fly.
Now, Ive seen pencil sketches created with a Wacom tablet on PS which have perfectly straight lines but still look like pencil sketches (Meaning they fade near the end of the stroke).

I tried using my pencil style PS brush to create these straight lines by touching the canvas with my Wacom pen , then pressing "SHIFT" and then touching the canvase again with my Wacom pen. I did get a pencil like straight line but it fades way too short. (Jeez, did that make any sense?)

Anyhow, if anyone has an answer to this technique I would much appreciate it.

Also if there are any other tips on creating good machinery, buildings, vehicle (anything with straight lines) illustrations it would be great.

Thanks.


Igz

[the good war]

you will need to adjust photoshops brush settings in order to get straight lines, while using a wacom tablet. You will need to make sure that there are not any special attributes activated such as "shape dynamics" or "other dynamics". once all the dynamics are off you can use the click,let go, hold shift and click again method.

[Datameister]

This is an unfortunate drawback of Photoshop. There are rumors that CS3 will include the canvas rotation capabilities that Painter has, but until then, we'll just have to make do as it is. The shift-click method isn't perfect, but it can be effective at times.

If anyone has any tips of the sort he's looking for, I'd love to hear 'em, too.

[cgfuller64]

Maybe rough in the lines, then overlay with the line tool and freetransform? I'm sorry but I've drawn with a mouse 4ever, and this method is work intensive, but precise. Hope that helps...

[WARHEAD]

Ignatz,

You still need to shift click to to do the straight lines, but you need to choose the right brush presets. I don't know which version of PS you have, but if it is CS and above :

Go into the presets dialogue and take all the settings off apart from shape dynamics
Go into the shape dynamics section and choose fade rather than pen pressure, with how many steps you want
Click on maximum diameter and choose your % settings

You will have to play around with these and the brush type settings to get the right look. Try 250 steps with 70% to start with, but experiment. I understand what effect you are trying to get - sort of 'Feng' construction lines.

[bumskee]

I have a 1 pixel brush which I use to draw straight lines, most of my brushes have shape dynamic on so I needed something that didn't quite fade away. :)

[dindon]

You could just use a ruler on top of the tablet, not that it would work too well :P