Basic Shapes & the Shape Tools

Chapter 3 closed with a tip pointing here directly: regular geometric shapes don't need to be drawn point by point with the Pen tool. This chapter introduces the dedicated shape tools built specifically for rectangles, ellipses, and polygons — faster, more precise, and far less error-prone than reaching for the Pen tool every time.

The Rectangle Tool

Clicking and dragging with the Rectangle tool draws a rectangle directly, with perfectly straight sides and precise right angles guaranteed by the tool itself, not by careful manual point placement. Both applications also support rounded corners on a rectangle — either dragged live from a small corner handle or set numerically — without needing to hand-edit anchor points into curves the way Chapter 3's Pen tool work would require.

The Ellipse Tool

The Ellipse tool works the same way for circles and ellipses — click and drag for a free-form ellipse, or hold a modifier key (Shift, in both applications) while dragging to constrain it to a perfect circle. A perfect circle drawn by hand with the Pen tool would require four smooth points with carefully matched handle lengths; the Ellipse tool produces the same mathematically exact result in one drag.

The Polygon Tool (and Star Tool)

The Polygon tool draws regular polygons — triangles, pentagons, hexagons, and beyond — with a numeric setting controlling exactly how many sides it has. A companion Star tool (present in both applications) works the same way for star shapes, with separate settings for the number of points and how deep the points cut inward. Both remove any need to manually calculate and place the points of a perfectly regular polygon or star by hand.

Precise Numeric Input: Dialog Boxes for Exact Dimensions

Rather than dragging by eye, both applications let a shape tool be used with a single click instead of a drag, opening a dialog box for exact numeric width, height, corner radius, or number of sides. This matters whenever a shape needs to be an exact size — a business card at precisely 3.5 by 2 inches, an icon at exactly 64 by 64 pixels — rather than whatever size a mouse drag happened to land on.

Shapes Are Still Paths: Converting to Editable Anchor Points

A shape drawn with these tools is still fundamentally made of anchor points and paths underneath, exactly as Chapter 1 described — the shape tools are simply a faster, more precise way of generating that same underlying structure. Both applications let a shape be converted into a fully editable path afterward, exposing its individual anchor points for the same kind of hand-editing Chapter 3 covered, useful once a rectangle or polygon needs to become something less regular than its starting form.

Hands-On Exercises