Photoshop Elements 6: The Missing Manual

The Pencil Tool

Basically just another brush, the Pencil tool shares the Brush tool's slot in the Toolbox. Choose the Pencil from the pop-out menu or press N to activate it.

The Pencil 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. It's especially useful when you want to work on a pixel-by-pixel basis.

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 12-12 for some help in understanding what's going on, or better yet, create a blank file (Creating a New File) and try it yourself.

Figure 12-12. The slightly confusing Auto Erase option, was 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 ...