The Line Tool allows us to create straight lines with ease. And with the assistant of the Selection Tool and the Properties box , we can manipulate our lines in many cool ways. This is a fairly simple tool to understand, and if you’ve been keeping up with the past tutorials I’ve done, you shouldn’t have a problem.

Make sure you have a new document open. Select the Line Tool from the Tool Bar. Now, find a point on the stage, click and drag the mouse, and release. The result should be a perfectly straight line.

Behold, the power of the Line Tool!

Now, if you want a straight line, than this tutorial has served it’s purpose. However, if you want to learn how to manipulate the line in a few ways, then keep reading. Select the Selection Tool from the Tool Bar and move your cursor to the middle of the line. You should see a half circle icon appear next to your cursor. Click and drag in any direction. You’ll see we get a half circle looking object.

With the Selection Tool, we can manipulate the line in a variety
of ways.

But wait, there’s more! With the Selection Tool, move your cursor towards one of the edges of the line. You should see a 90 degree angle icon appear. With this, click and drag in any direction. This allows us to stretch out or shorten our half circle from one end.

We can shorten or widen the circle with the Selection Tool.

Of course we can resize the entire object with the Free Transform Tool. For more information on the Free Transform Tool and how to use it, please refer back to the Free Transform Tool Tutorial. You can also change the color, width, and texture of the line. By clicking the line with the Selection Tool, you’ll notice some options will appear in the Properties Box (if you don’t have the Properties Box open, go to Window, Properties, and then select Properties). Here, you can select the color, width, texture, and more of the current line.

The Properties box gives you a wide range of options.

As you can see, next to the pencil icon is a colored box. Select this box to change the color (if you want to do something other than a solid color, refer back to the Gradient Transform Tool Tutorial). To the right of this box is a drop down menu with a number. Select the drop down menu or type in a different number to change the width of the line. The the right of that is the texture drop down menu. Select that to change the current texture of your line. On the bottom left you’ll see boxes labeled W, H, X, and Y. This will allow you to change the size and location of the line numerically. Play around with all these options, and you’ll see you can come up with some pretty cool results.

By using a combination of the Properties tools, you can create
some cool results.

Up next I will be covering the Lasso Tool. Stay Tuned!

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