Draw a house - practice with layers in Photoshop CS3

Open Photoshop and create a new file. Select New from the File menu. You can select preset sizes for your drawing from the Preset box. For this example, use US Paper.

 

Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extendent - File New

Save the file right away and give it a descriptive name. Once you save the file, as a Photoshop document, you can rapidly save changes with the Control S keyboard sequence.

File Save as

Give your files descriptive names to make it easier to find them later.

Save As

The file's name shows up in the title bar of the Photoshop window.

The name of the file shows up in the title bar of the Photoshop window

Select the rectangle from the toolbar. The square, rounded square, circle, line, and custom shape tool all share the same area, so if you don't see the rectangle, press down and the options will show up and you can select the rectangle.

Select the rectangle tool from the tool window

Draw a frame for the house.

Draw a rectangle. Once the rectangle tool is selected, the cursor changes to a plus sign. Press down, draw the rectangle, and release when done.

Select the layer in the layer window and give the house's frame a descriptive name. If you start editing photos and the like, it is very important to give your layers descriptive names to keep track of what you're doing.

label the layer

Create a new layer and label it appropriately.

Create a new layer

The next object we'll draw is a roof for our house, so label the new layer "roof."

Label the layer roof

Select the custom shape tool.

Select custom shape tool from the tool bar

Select a solid triangle from the custom shape tool menu. If you do not have a triangle available, look for a little right arrow on the top right hand side of the custom shape tool. Click on it and it will list other available shape sets. Open one of them up and append it to the list. Also note that you can find other custom shapes to add to your menu.

Select a solid triangle in the custom shape menu

Draw the triangle.

 

Draw the roof

Label the layer "roof."

 

Create a new layer and label it door

Create a new layer and label it door. Draw a door. Create a new layer and draw a doorknob. When you use the ellipse tool, the circle tool, holding the shift key will "constrain" the shape to make it "perfect." Not holding the shift key will allow you to draw ovals and imperfect circles.

Draw a door and a door knob. Create a new layer for each and give each layer a descriptive name.

Select all four layers in the layer window. Click on the vertical center align button at the top of the screen.

Align the images

The vertical align button will cause all the shapes to be aligned through their vertical centers.

Centered house

Select the roof layer and move the roof to a position that looks correct.

 

Select the door knob and nudge it to the right

Select the door knob and nudge it to the right. You can move it with the mouse or you can nudge it with your right arrow key.