Most of us hate using the pen tool. It's one of the most confusing tools if you've never had help using it before and can create a horrible mess.


In this tutorial, I'll show you how to use the pen tool to guide your text to make really nice text effects.

Start with any size file. I'm going to use 400 x 400 with a transparent background.



Click on the pen tool located on your tools menu on the left.



Now here comes the tricky part, using the pen tool for a custom design. When you're using the pen tool, you have two options: click, or click and drag.

The first point will be just a single click. Then, we'll go a few inches to the right and click and drag and then we'll go a little further and do another click and drag to create a wave effect.




Now, select the text tool right under the pen tool on your left in the menu.


With this selected, hover over the first point of the wave you made with the pen tool and the cursor will change into the text cursor with a wavy line through it. This means you can type here.

Now just simply click on the dot and begin typing. The text will follow the pen tool exactly.



You can use this for pretty much anything. You can create a circle, a heart, a star, anything, and type whatever you want. It will follow the pen tool anywhere you direct it.