Photoshop: tricky snapping of vector shapes

Sep-9-06, 3:48 pm by Hanford
File under: Photoshop, design, Adobe

First off, although I love them, I have some issues Photoshop's Vector tools.. But I thought I'd share this little trick I use with snapping vector shapes to guides.

The Problem

When moving stuff around with the Path Selection Tool, shapes only want to snap to guide lines via their points. This can cause the occasional problem when a shape's curve defines one of it's edges. Take this rounded triangle for example:

Photoshop Shape snapping

It's easy to get the left edge of the triangle to snap to a guide, but the right hand side isn't that easy becuase it's rightmost edge is not defined by a point, but by the curve. It wants to snap here:

Photoshop Shape snapping

The Solution

However, if I first trigger Free Transform (Ctrl-F), I can move the shape with a bounding box around it, and all of it's edges and corners without a problem:

Photoshop Shape snapping

I'm just using Free Transform to change it's position; not it's size or rotation, and it also allows me to snap the shape's center to guides as well.

Okay, that's all for now. Check out my other Photoshop junk here. Enjoy!

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