Expert: LizaL - 4/28/2006

Question
Dear Lizal,
   I have been using the pen tool with complete success thanks to you.  For some reason all of a sudden I am getting a dark outline as I try to outline my selection.  I had to delete Photoshop and then reinstall it.  Since reinstalling Photoshop this problem has occurred.  There must be some way to not have this dark outline following the pen tool I just can't figure out how to manage it.  Just to refresh your memory I am using Photoshop 7.0 on Windows xp home edition. I look forward to your answer.  In the past your advice has been 100 percent accurate and quite easy to understand.
        Respectfully yours Stewart Arno

Answer
Hi Stewart,

Good to hear from you! But I'm wondering what's going on with your pen tool. That sounds odd.

Let me ask you -- when you say there's a dark outline following the pen tool, do you mean that your path is filling in? Or is there an actual line that follows the path you're drawing?

As for the former situation, your shape would fill in if you had the Shape Layers button depressed, in the Pen tool options at the top of your Photoshop options bar. See below, how my path becomes a shape as I draw, if I have that button depressed:
http://little-works.com/all_experts/shapelayers.mov

And this will happen with the Freeform pen tool, as well.

The button to the right of that will let you draw just a regular path.

But it doesn't sound like to me like this is what you're describing, and I think you've had some good successes with the Pen tool, so you'd know if this was the problem.

Another question -- does the dark outline stay in your file? That is, is it made of pixels, and does it produce a real line? Can you erase it? Or does it just look like a shadow following the path produced by your Pen tool?

If it's purely something on your screen, and not made of pixels, I'm wondering if something's wrong with your video card. Do you have a hardware diagnostics CD that came with your computer? If so, I'd run it and see what kind of results you get for your video card.

Anyway, I've searched and searched and just can't find a source where this has happened. That doesn't mean it hasn't, though! If you can, please post back and give me some more information, and let's go from there.

Thanks!

Lisa