Make a Dotted or Dashed Line in Photoshop follow a Path
Drawing a dotted line is easy in Illustrator. You just change it in the stroke palette. You would think it was just as easy in Photoshop but it is a little bit trickier. This short tutorial aims to show you how to quickly make a dotted or dashed line in Photoshop and then apply it to a curve.
1. Open your Brushes Palette
Open your brushes palette by going to Window > Brushes, or hit F5 on your keyboard. Once open, click on “Brush Tip Shape” within the Brushes palette and select a brush like 9px.
![Photoshop Brush Window](../archive/images/brush-action-pane-default.png)
The Brush Window allows you to make changes to the appearance of your brush in Photoshop.
Note: You may need to reset your brushes - in the top right hand corner of the palette under the cross there is a little down arrow with three lines to the right of it. Click this and there is a flyout menu. Choose “Reset Brushes…”. You should also make sure all the options to the left are un-ticked.
2. Adjust the “Spacing” to create the dots or dashes
Adjust the spacing to achieve the desired effect in this example we set the spacing to 200%.
![Photoshop Brush Window Spacing 200 pc](../archive/images/brush-action-pane-spacing.png)
The Brush Window shows brush spacing set to 200%.
3a. To Draw a Straight Line
With the brush or pencil tool, hold shift, drag and bam, perfectly straight dotted line.
![Final Straight Line](../archive/images/pencil-straight-line.png)
Draw a perfect straight dotted line using the brush tool by holing the shift key down.
3b. To Draw a Curved Line
Draw a curve using the Pen tool, click and drag to create a curved path. You should end up with something like the example below:
![Curve Drawn with the Pen Tool](../archive/images/line-pen-tool.png)
Draw a curve using the pen tool, click and drag to create a curve you can then edit with the Select Tool.
Right click your path and select “Stroke Path…” from the menu.
You will then see a popup box appear. Select Pencil or Brush Tool from the list and click OK.
![Stroke Settings](../archive/images/stroke-settings-box.png)
Select the Tool to use for your stroke.
Voilà you are done.
![Final Curved Line](../archive/images/final-dotted-line.png)
The final result shown above with a dotted line following your path.
This article was posted on 12 February 2010 in Photography, Tutorials
What you have had to say about all this...
I would have never thought that you would draw the line first then go back and add the spacing. It is not the most obvious process, but it is easy nonetheless.
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- Photoshop GraphıcThat's the end of this article. I hope you found it useful. If you're enjoyed this article why don't you have a look around the archives, where you can find some more tutorials, tips and general ramblings.
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