Pen and vector editing

Drawing with the Pen tool

Press P to activate the Pen tool.

• Click on the canvas to add a straight-line anchor point.
• Click and drag to add a curved anchor point — dragging controls the curve handles on both sides.
• Click the first point to close the path and finish it.
• Press Enter or Esc to finish the path without closing it (open path) and leave the Pen tool.

Entering vector edit mode

After drawing a vector, double-click it to enter vector edit mode. You can also select an existing vector or shape and press Enter.

In vector edit mode:

• Click an anchor point to select it.
• Drag a selected anchor to move it.
• Drag a curve handle to adjust the curve on either side.
• Click an empty segment to add a new anchor point.
• Select an anchor and press Delete / Backspace to remove it.
• Press Esc or Enter to exit vector edit mode.

Anchor types

Each anchor point has a type that controls its curve handles:

• Mirrored — both handles stay equal in length and direction, producing a smooth curve.
• Disconnected — each handle can be moved independently.
• Straight — no curve handles; the anchor produces a sharp corner.

Click the anchor type buttons in the inspector or inline toolbar to change the type of a selected anchor.

Vector edit shortcuts

Cutting with the Knife

Open the Pen button's More tools flyout, pick Knife (E), and drag across the paths you want to cut.

• Cut width on the settings bar is in document pixels, so zooming does not change it. At 0 the path is split with no gap. Above 0 the drag sweeps a band of that width and the geometry inside the band is removed, leaving a real gap.
• Hold Shift to constrain the cut to a straight line at 15° steps from where the drag started.
• The cut snaps to anchors, midpoints and centers of nearby paths and to the alignment guides. Hold Ctrl (⌃ on Mac) to turn snapping off.
• Select the layers you want to cut first and the Knife only touches those. With nothing selected, every visible unlocked vector and shape is in scope.
• Esc discards the sweep in progress; ✓ on the settings bar returns to the Select tool.

The cut is solved against the real curve rather than a straightened stand-in, so a short stroke at a high zoom lands exactly where you drew it.

The Knife cuts the path as it was drawn. A corner rounded with a radius or the Corner tool is cut on the sharp corner underneath, so a cut placed right at a rounded corner can land slightly away from the curve you see.

Path construction and editing tools

The Shape button's Path construction submenu holds the tools that draw new geometry off existing paths, and the contextual toolbar shown while a vector or shape is selected holds the tools that edit them (see the Toolbar reference). They have no keyboard shortcuts. A path they create (and a path started with the Pen) is stroked in the stroke colour of the vector or shape you selected last, or black when there is none. In all of them, Esc cancels the gesture in progress and, pressed again, returns to the Select tool; holding Ctrl (⌃ on Mac) while you drag turns off snapping to anchors, midpoints, and centers. While one of these tools is running it owns the keyboard, so the Select and vector edit shortcuts stand down until you leave it: Delete no longer removes an anchor, and the arrow keys go to the tool (brush size and tolerance in Smart Remove Brush, the number of axes in Mirror) instead of nudging the selection. Copy, cut, paste and undo keep working. The exception is Mirror with its anchors open (Edit path), which hands the keyboard back to vector edit mode.

Construction tools

• Connect — Click one open endpoint, then press on another (on the same path or a different one) and hold: drag up or down to change the handle length, left or right to shift the balance between the two handles, and release to join the paths with a smooth bridge. Hold Shift while dragging to keep the two handles the same length, so the drag only changes the size of the bridge and not the balance between its ends. Hold Alt / Option for a perpendicular bridge. You can pan and zoom between the two picks.
• Tangent Line / Perpendicular Line — Press on a path and drag to draw a line that leaves it along the tangent (or the normal); or press in empty space and drag toward a path so the line ends where it touches. In tangent mode, dragging from one path to another draws their common tangent.
• Circle by Points — Click two points (or press and drag) to draw the circle that has them as a diameter. To draw a circle through three points, keep the button down on the second point and drag. Creates an ellipse shape.
• Arc by Points — Click the start and end points, then click a third point the arc passes through. Hold Alt / Option so the third point instead sets the direction the arc leaves the start point. Creates an open vector path.
• Tangent Circle — Click a point on one path, then click a second path: the circle touches the first path at your click and is tangent to the second. Hold Shift on the second click to use the default radius, or keep the button down and drag to set the radius by hand.
• Curvature Circle — Hover a curve and the circle matching its curvature at that point appears; click to create it. It snaps to anchors and shape centers; hold Ctrl to sweep along the path freely. Straight segments and inflection points have no such circle and show nothing.
• Straighten — Press on a segment to rotate it about its midpoint onto the nearest horizontal or vertical and drop its handles. Hold Alt / Option for the other axis, Shift to keep the handles. Drag before releasing to shift the straightened segment sideways. Works on vector paths only.
• Orient — Draw a reference line (click both ends, or drag; a snap marker shows where each point will land before you click), then grab either end of it and drag: the line turns about its other end and the selection rotates by the same angle. Shift constrains to 45° steps; Alt / Option rotates a copy. The line stays until you draw a new one, so the same angle can be applied again.
• Orient Transform — Draw a source line, then a destination line (the same snap marker guides each point); the selection is rotated and scaled so the first maps onto the second. Its modes toggle any time the tool is active, by key or from the checkboxes on the settings bar: A mirrors the result, D keeps a duplicate, R retains the original selection, and S locks the size. While the button is held on the destination line (drag it, or hold after its second click), Space reverses it. A, D, and S stay set between uses; Space and R reset after each one.

Path editing tools

• Add anchors — Subdivides segments without changing their shape. Set Anchors per segment (1 to 100) in the submenu, then choose Add anchors. In vector edit mode it works on the selected segments; with a vector or shape selected on the canvas it works on every segment of the path. Rounded corners bordering a subdivided segment are baked to their visible curve first, so subdivision never shrinks a radius, and a variable stroke width is carried onto the new segments. Applied to a shape it turns the layer into a vector path, so the parametric shape controls (polygon sides, star points) are gone afterwards. One undo step. This is a one-shot menu command rather than a running tool, so the vector edit shortcuts keep working.
• Corner tool — Rounds a corner by dragging it on the canvas instead of typing a radius. Select one or more anchors in vector edit mode and turn it on: each anchor that joins exactly two segments gets three handles, unless the two segments run nearly straight through it, which leaves no corner to round. Drag the middle handle along the corner's bisector to grow or shrink both sides at once, keeping their ratio; drag either side handle to set that side on its own, which is how you build an asymmetric corner. When the two sides are equal the corner is an ordinary radius, so both stop at half the length of the shorter of the two segments and stay circular; once the sides differ, each one stops at half the length of the segment it runs along. A plain click on a handle does nothing — the drag has to travel a few pixels before it counts. Esc switches the handles off and leaves you in vector edit mode. Like Add anchors it is not a running path tool, so anchor editing and its shortcuts stay live while the handles are on. The same two numbers are in the inspector as Corner fine-tuning.
• Smooth curves — Evens out the curvature along the path instead of adding or removing anchors. Select the paths (or, in vector edit mode, just the anchors and segments you want) and choose it: the contextual toolbar becomes its settings bar with Keep anchors / Optimize contour, Strength, Max deviation in document pixels, and Keep sharp corners, and the canvas previews every change live. Rounded corners and the segments beside them are never touched, and a change that would make the path cross itself is rejected. Enter or ✓ commits the whole selection as one undo step; Esc or ✕ leaves the path exactly as it was. Applied to a shape it turns the layer into a vector path. See Smooth curves.
• Extend Path — Hover an endpoint of an open path and drag to lengthen or shorten it. E cycles how it continues (same Bézier, constant-radius arc, spiral, or straight line), V flips the arc direction, Z (while dragging) re-anchors the drag to the other endpoint, and C snaps the length to 10-unit steps. The extension snaps to where it crosses another path.
• Reposition Point — Select the paths (before or after picking the tool) and their anchors appear; the anchors follow the selection. Drag an anchor to slide it along the path while the curve keeps its shape; it snaps at 45° tangent angles. Hold Alt / Option to preview what a click would do, then Alt-click a path to add an anchor, or an anchor to remove it (refused if the shape would change). Endpoints of open paths don't slide. Works on vector paths only. Enter or Esc ends the session and returns to Select; Esc during a drag only discards that drag.
• Smart Remove Brush — Select the paths (or nothing, to work on every path) and brush over them: anchors under the brush are removed only where the path can keep its shape within the tolerance. ← / → change the brush size, ↑ / ↓ the tolerance; hold S for a small brush and Ctrl to remove anchors without re-smoothing. Works on vector paths only. One stroke is one undo step; Enter or Esc ends the session.

Mirror

Select what you want to mirror, then pick Mirror. Symmetry axes follow the cursor; click to pin them, or press and drag to pin the origin and set the angle (Shift for 45° steps). While pinned, drag an axis to rotate the set or drag the origin to move it; the settings bar's Origin X / Y fields move it by number (and pin following axes at that point). ↑ / ↓, 1–9, or the − / + buttons on the canvas set the number of axes (up to 72). Tapping Shift cycles the active sector clockwise (Alt+Shift counter-clockwise): only artwork in that sector is mirrored, and until you pick one the sector follows your selection. T toggles Trim & Join (on by default; the axes are drawn dashed while it's off), which clips the artwork to the active sector and welds the mirrored pieces together along the axes (a trimmed shape becomes a vector path). Press Enter (or tick Edit path) to open the selected paths' anchors under the pinned axes: edit them as in vector edit mode and the mirrored preview follows live; Enter, Esc, or a double-click on empty canvas closes the anchors again. Click ✓ Apply on the settings bar to create the mirrored copies (one undo step) and return to Select; when nothing could be mirrored, the tool stays open and says why on the canvas. With exactly one frame selected, Shift+Enter (or Apply to frame) turns the axes into that frame's live axes: anything you draw or edit inside the frame keeps mirroring, and the frame shows its axes as faint lines whenever it's selected. Live axes don't nest: a live frame placed inside another live frame keeps its own axes and isn't mirrored by the outer one. Esc releases the axes to follow the cursor again (with the anchors open, Esc during an axis drag only drops that drag); press it again to leave the tool. Once you leave Mirror with the axes pinned, including after ✓ Apply, they stay in effect for the Pencil tool: each stroke commits together with its mirrored copies. Turning them into a frame's live axes (Shift+Enter) consumes them instead. To clear them, return to Mirror and press Esc.

Tips

• Use fewer anchor points for cleaner, smoother paths — add more only where the shape requires it.
• Zoom in before editing anchors to see handles clearly.
• Use Q (lasso mode) to drag-select multiple anchors at once.
• After finishing a path, use Outline Stroke to convert a stroked path into a filled shape you can further edit.

Related articles

• Edit anchor points
• Boolean operations
• Toolbar
• Keyboard shortcuts