how to draw dotted line in photoshop

While Photoshop doesn't offer a dashed line option, such every bit that plant in Illustrator'southward Stroke palette, you can easily simulate them by editing a brush in the Brushes palette.

The key to dashed lines is the Spacing option. Combined with Roundness in Photoshop vii, you can change a foursquare castor into a dashed line quickly. Here'southward what you need to see in the Photoshop 7 Brushes palette:

Recall that you lot need to open up the Brushes palette from the Palette Well or the Window menu (or the F5 key). The small Brushes palette plant at the left stop of the Options Bar is for brush choice, not castor editing or creation. And what if the Brushes palette is grayed out and unavailable? Switch to a brush-using tool, such every bit the Brush tool (printing B on the keyboard).

Reducing the Roundness makes a square castor flat. Increasing the Spacing moves each "case" of the castor tip imprint farther apart. (Think of Photoshop'due south brushes as applying the brush tip many times close together as you drag, rather than every bit a continuous stream of color, like an ink pen.) And, of course, the "nuance" doesn't need to be at 50% roundness.

Don't forget that you can make vertical dashed lines rather than horizontal by irresolute the Bending setting in the Brushes palette to 90 degrees.

In Photoshop 6, you must first define a pocket-sized rectangle as a castor and and then adapt the spacing. (Photoshop 6 doesn't allow yous to modify the Roundness value for non-round brushes.) Create a rectangle of the size of your dashes, make full with blackness, and use the menu command Edit> Ascertain Brush. You tin utilize the Rectangular Marquee tool to create the shape-make certain that Feathering is set up to zip in the Options Bar.

Give the new castor a distinctive name, one that reflects both its size and purpose.

Once you lot've created your dashed line, you can apply it with whatsoever castor-related tool. In addition to the Brush (Paintbrush in Photoshop half dozen), Pencil, History, Art History, and Eraser tools, you use brushes with the stamp, focus, and toning tools.

Retrieve, however, that these dashes volition non follow the paths of the cursor, just instead stay oriented to the folio. This figure shows the deviation between a dashed line created in Photoshop (top) and ane created in Adobe Illustrator (bottom). The Illustrator dashes follow the path no matter how it curves.

The orientation of the "dashes" to the path in Photoshop is insignificant when a symmetrical brush is used. A round castor, for example, never seems to be mis-oriented.

When you do need to curve a dashed line, remember the Shear filter (Filter> Distort> Shear). Yous can bend and twist a straight line. To save a pace, draw the line vertically (the filter works only horizontally). Information technology's too unremarkably a good idea to take the dashed line on a separate layer and have no active selection.

The Shear filter enables y'all to bend and twist. Click on the vertical line in the preview window to add an anchor point and drag. You can identify several points as necessary. And if you'll be working close to the border of the window, click the button for Repeat Edge Pixels.