Drawing hollow circles in Photoshop

[Sigurd]

I'd like to have a figure art construction layer with computer drawn circles and straight lines. The lines are no problem in Photshop but the Circles really seem to be a pain.

Am I missinge something super fundamentally basic? How do you draw a circle outline in Photoshop without subtracting a second smaller solid circle from a first?


Appreciate any help.

Sigurd

[Fingers]

Use the circular selection tool (shift-M), then right-click and select "stroke"... location inside and width of 1 pixel works well as a construction aid.

[glikster]

or set the "circle" tool to path only and stroke the path. amounts to the same thing.
You set how the shape tools work on the properties bar when the tool is selected.

[Blaise]

Awesome. I've wondered about this too.

[bumskee]

circles??? well.. I usually use.. a circular marquee and then fill it with any colour then apply layer style, that way you have control over width, colour, blending mode and the position of the stroke. Once you are done you just change the fill to 0% leaving only the layer style visible.

[Sigurd]

Thank You, Thank You, Thank You.


It was one of those annoying things I absolutely felt I should know.

I like the Stroke command with a 2 pixel thickness - and you can quote me!


Sigurd

[Snarfevs]

my trick is circular shape, fill pixels, layerstyle stroke, fill 0%, create layers.

[CaneHoyer]

As Glikster wrote.

Take the "shape tool to path" and then make your circle.

Now save the path so you can use it later on...

Then selest the brush you like, also the thickness you want to have the outline.
go to path palette and click on "fill path outline with brush" (path has to be activated!).

Thats it.

And if you like to do another similar circle, or a smaller one then just take the path and move or transform it and then same procedure.

The same if you have already a path of an object, you can use the path to fill with a brush.

Very simple!

(Hope the translation of the tools is correct, because I use a german version)

[Dave Black]

Try this:

Make an action that strokes a selection and then deselects the selection.

Set that action to a function key, say F4.

Now, all you need to do to create a circle is to make a circlular marquee selection, and then hit a button. Works great.

-Dave

[T0ffee_Girl]

If i understand what you are trying to achieve here then the way I generally do it is as follows:

Use shape tool to draw a circle.
Rasterize shape
Select the shape the go to select>modify>contract
choose how many pixels and ok
hit delete to get rid of centre.