Photoshop help

[funkyboogalooo]

Guys have a blank template of amotorbike on photoshop and now I want to put a fairly simple paintwork design on it for a customer. I have allways used paint (simple enough for me) but thought I ought to try and stay awake during the technical revolution. So how would I go about placing a curved line on one of the fairings and filling it with a different colour? In paint I would use the bendy line tool and drag it til it was in the right place and simply fill. Trouble is I cant seem to find a similar tool in photoshop.
Cheers
Mike

[miniman]

You can use the "lasso" tool:

Click and hold:



to give:



and select "polygonal lasso tool"

to build a multi-point box around something. Everything you do from then will be constrained to within the frame, so you can use fill, airbrush etc.

[Bacardi]

Difficult to tell with out seeing the pic.

The Lasso tool can be a pain if you 'drop' the path you are drawing, then you have to shift/alt to ad or subtract from the loaded selection. The Polygon tool only lets you draw in straight lines. If you have a clearly defined edge the Magnetic Lasso tool may work as maybe the magic wand.

To create an accurate outline/s in PS the pen tool is the kiddie. You can create smooth, editable, bezeir curves which you can then load as selection/s. Not the easiest tool in the box to master and if you only have LE might not even be there.

If you prefer painting an area you could try Quick Mask mode. Hit 'Q' on the keyboard, make sure black is the foreground colour, pick a brush and paint the area. By default it should appear red. when you're happy, hit 'Q' again and it will leave you with a loaded selection. If the artwork's on its own layer you can inverse the selection and turn it into a layer mask. When you are painting in Quick Mask mode you can hit the 'X' key to flip the foreground and background colours, black paints it on, white rubs it off. You can work quite quickly this way. To get to black & white foreground/background colour just hit 'D'.

For more info, check out the help menu

HTH

[funkyboogalooo]

thanks guys