So let's now talk about the Pen Tool a little bit more in depth things you want to know, in order to use it properly. So first off, just take a look here I have the Move Tool activated. This area on top is where the contextual menu for every tool is going to be placed. Well, in the case of the move tool, we only see documents set up and preferences. But if I change to the pen tool, and I click here, you see it absolutely changes to something very different. So this is what we call a contextual menu for each one of the tools.
The area that we are interested now is this one here, where the multiple depend tool are displayed. Let's start seeing what each one of them mean. By default, you're gonna see activated depend mode depend mode is more or less a freehand mode. It allows you to draw sharp notes as well as self notes. This is where I like to call it the free hand mode, because you can do virtually anything with it. And this is the one that I use the most.
And it's the one that you probably would use the most. Let's get rid of this one is pretty simple concept how to use it. Now let's go for the second one. This is the smart mode. It probably rings a bell to you, because we talked about smart notes before, you're going to see how it works. I pick on the cameras, I get the smart notes we saw before.
If I click here, now, I get this straight line. I also have some handles if I want to manipulate it. I'm going to click here. And it automatically is going to create this nice, smooth curve for me. I didn't pull, I'm just clicking, click again. I don't pull.
I don't drag I click again and again creates these super smooth curve automatically. Basically, that's all you need to know by now about this mode, smart mode. Let's get rid of this. Let's go for the next one, which is called the polygon mode, the polygon mode is going to allow you only sharp notes, you cannot make any kind of curves if I drop. As you can see it moves this segment somewhere else, but I cannot create any soft node. So you're always going to have angles and straight lines.
Okay? That is for the polygon mode, it's going to get rid of this one. And we're going to see last the line mode which is basically allowing you to create standalone lines and of course, you are not going to be able to close a shape here because this is just straight segments. You cannot even create any curves with it. Okay, this is very comfortable when you want to really create lots of straight lines fast which if you're using Their pen mode wouldn't work like this because it's going to join them together. If you want to create the next line, you have to double click on the last node, then create the next one that will create line create the next one.
So it's more convenient to use the line mode if you just want to create standalone lines. Okay. So before we conclude this lesson, I would like to talk about a couple of ways to amend your errors, especially as a beginner and also to speed up your workflow. We're not going to see them all just yet, but we're going to see some handy tips that will help you out while you're drawing. So imagine we have this little dot here, and we'll imagine it's smaller and you're drawing towards it. That's what you want to learn your, your pen to now and for whatever reason, because you're a beginner because it's just an error because you're a human wherever you just click somewhere else.
Oh no, this is not what I wanted to be. How do I amend this? There are several ways to do this. But just to do it fast and on the fly, don't let go of the last node you traced. Click the spacebar. And now you can move the last point you traced whatever you want.
Okay, so that's one of the handy tips really, really useful. And the last thing I want to talk about is just how to constrain your lines into perfect angles by clicking shift. See, I have perfect angles here. Now, if I want 90 degrees, I just go like so. Want to but if I move it to the sides, it's going to constrain into 45 increments. Okay, so like this 90 now 45 now 4545 4590 again, and so on.
So with this, we finish this lesson. Let's see now A little bit more before we start with the exercises