Question- Creating a Dashed Outline

I wrote a tutorial on this once.... let me see if I can find it...

 

I found it! This is from a chat I did in 2013 and keep in mind I use regular Photoshop, not PSE, so I'm not sure if these steps all work in PSE... but give it a shot:

1. Select the Brush Tool (B) and set your brush size to about 25 px and the hardness to 100%. The color doesn't matter.





2. Find the Toggle Brush Panel icon in the upper left corner of the Photoshop screen.





3. In the Brush Panel, set the Spacing to about 150%:





4. Open a blank canvas in Photoshop. (I'm using 600 x 600 pixels at 72 dpi) Click anywhere on the canvas to create one dot. Then hold down Shift and click somewhere on the opposite side of the canvas. You should get a perfect spaced line of dots.



5. Now try the same thing again with your spacing set at about 80%. This time before you even click the first time, hold down Shift and click and drag across the canvas. This is a very cool trick for creating a peek of scallop underneath a layer.




and used on a layout (under the orange strip in the middle):





6. Now the cool thing is, that you can do this with any shape brush and any spacing! Here are a few other examples. Create a small square and then rotate it 45°. The brush it across the page. Or a donut shape. Or a tiny rectangle for a dashed line.






7. Now, what if you don't have a square brush or a donut shaped brush? You can create your own brush out of just about any shape.

7a. Use the shape tool (U) and create a square. (hold Shift down while dragging the rectangle shape and you'll get a perfect square)

7b. Right click on the layer containing the square shape you just created (right click on the layer name, probably Shape 1 or Shape 2, etc.) and click on Rasterize Layer.




7c. Hold down CTRL and click on miniature window of the same layer. This will put marching ants around your square shape.





7d. Then on the top edge of your Photoshop window, click Edit, Define Brush Preset. You can name it anything you want and click OK. You've just created your own brush that you can use for the technique above.






Now we are going to get REALLY crazy and fun! This is one of my all time favorite tricks with Photoshop. We are going to learn a technique called Stroking a Path. This is where you use a brush and space it evenly all around a path (or shape). Are you ready? We are going to start simple and stroke a path around a square shape.


8. Create a new blank canvas. I'm using 600 x 600 pixels at 72 dpi again. Now using the Shape Tool (U) create a large square that fills ¾ of your canvas.





9. Here comes the tricky/magical part. Hold CTRL and click on the big square shape layer. (the one that fills ¾ of your new canvas). This will put marching ants around the big square shape. Next click on the PATHS tab, (near the LAYERS tab):





10. On the PATHS tab, near the bottom, click on the Make Work Path from Selection icon:





11. Now we are going to stroke a path. Switch back to the LAYERS tab and create a new layer above the big square shape layer.





12. Select the Brush Tool (B) and let's use a round brush at 25 px, 100% hardness again. Let's set our spacing to around 80% again so the circles will overlap. Now switch back to the PATHS tab again. Hold down ALT and click on the Stroke Path with Brush icon:





13. A pop up will appear. Make sure the tool is set to Brush and then click okay.





Now you will have an evenly spaced set of circles around your square shape!






Here is an example of how I used this technique on a layout (on the edge of the cork paper):




More fun examples:




[/URL]






and some free hand fun (which clearly shows why I'm not a designer):

 

Ha ha ha... I just realized, I already posted this as a tutorial in the forum here... that could have saved me some looking. Lol! I was searching on my own hard drive. Whoops! Lol! But you wouldn't have known that "stroke a path" was the same thing as creating a dashed line around something.

https://the-lilypad.com/forum/threads/brush-tutorial-stroke-a-path.30517/

 

Yes, I tried it in PSE13 and it was fine. I, like some others, totally forget about this. Btw, one thing I did years ago was made an 11.5 or 11inch dotted outline 'frame' and saved it as a .png. No need to reinvent the wheel all the time!

 

Great tutorial!

 

@Karen for some reason now I have Madonna Strike a Pose song stuck in my head! LOL!!!!!

 

Very useful tutorial..bookmarking this. Thanks.

 

@Iowan How do you bookmark/save etc within the TLP site? or can you?

 

This is what I do but there might be easier ways. Hit the little number (#3 in this instance ) at the top right of the post and copy the link (the one in pale yellow). Paste the link into a new window in your browser. Just bookmark it as you would normally do so in your browser.

You can also just hit the Watch Thread link at the top of the page.

I hope this answers your question.
Carol

 

Great tutorial! I did not know that "Stroke a Path" trick!!

 

Thank you @Iowan. So the save is done on your own browser not here IN TLP. I thought you were saving here.