Photoshop Elements 3: The Missing Manual

The Pencil Tool

The Pencil tool is basically just another brush, although it has its own icon, just above the Eraser in the Toolbox. Click it or press N to activate the Pencil.

It has many of the same setting options as the Brush—like size, mode, and opacity—but it offers only hard-edged brushes. In other words, you can't draw fuzzy lines with the pencil, not even the kind of lines you'd sketch with a soft pencil. The Pencil's lines are always very well defined.

You use the Pencil tool the same way you use any other brush. The big difference is the Auto Erase option (the checkbox is located in the Options bar). Auto Erase makes the Pencil paint with the background color over areas that contain the foreground color. But if you start dragging in an area that doesn't contain the foreground color, it paints with the foreground color instead. This is really confusing until you try it, but then it's pretty easy to understand. Take a look at Figure 11-11 for some help in understanding what's going on, or better yet, create a blank document and try it yourself.

Figure 11-11. The slightly confusing Auto Erase option, used to create two lines: a horizontal one consisting of the foreground color (blue) and a vertical one consisting of the background color (pink).The horizontal line was drawn by starting with the cursor in the background (thus, the pencil erased the pink, leaving a blue line ...