Shapes, pen & vector editing
From rectangles to hand-drawn paths. Draw shapes, author béziers with the pen, edit points directly, and combine everything with boolean operations.
Shapes
The Shape tool and its variants. Click for a default, drag to size.
| Shape | Key |
|---|---|
| Rectangle | R |
| Ellipse | O |
| Line | L |
| Arrow | ⇧ L |
| Triangle | — |
| Star | — |
Triangle and Star have no shortcut — reach them from the Shape chevron. Rectangles, frames and images take a corner radius (the C field in Appearance).
Pen & pencil
Two ways to make a path.
Pen (P)
- Click to drop an anchor; click-drag to pull a bézier handle for a curve.
- Click the first anchor again to close the path, or press Enter / Esc to finish it open.
- Click a loose endpoint of an existing open path to resume drawing from it.
Pencil (⇧P)
Freehand — drag to draw; the stroke is smoothed when you release. The Pen chevron also carries stroke-weight presets (Hairline · Fine · Regular · Bold · Heavy).
Edit points
Node editing lets you reshape a path after the fact.
Double-click a path (or press Enter with it selected) to enter point mode. Drag anchors and their handles to reshape; the Point section shows the selected vertex’s X/Y. Double-click a vertex to toggle it between a sharp corner and a smooth curve. Esc exits.
Boolean operations
Combine two or more shapes into one path. Select them, then:
A boolean stays live — double-click it to edit the operands. Flatten (⌘ E) bakes it into a single path. Use as mask (⌃ ⌘ M) clips the layers above to the selected shape.
Strokes
The Stroke section, on any shape or path.
Set the stroke color, weight (W), and a style that cycles Solid → Dotted → Dashed. On a path you can also set the alignment — Center · Inside · Outside. The editor menu adds weight presets (Hairline / Thin 0.5 / Regular 1 / Medium 2 / Bold 4 / Heavy 8), end caps (Butt / Round / Square / Arrow) and joins (Miter / Round / Bevel).
Fills, gradients and the color picker have their own chapter: Color, fills & effects.