Creating Dotted Lines and Areas in Photoshop

This was a question I asked myself for a long time, since creating dotted lines in Illustrator was easily possible, but how to do dotted lines in Photoshop? And what can I do more in photoshop with dots? The version of Photoshop that was used here was Photoshop CS3.

Level: Beginner

Creating Dotted Lines

Creating Dotted Lines is fairly easy in Photoshop. There is not a single tool or option for it, but we just have to tweak some brush-settings and we have our dotted lines in seconds.

Start by opening a new file (Ctr+N, or File > New), and make it for example 500 by 500 pixels. Select the Brush Tool by clicking on the icon , or by hitting B on your keyboard. Now select any brush you want. But remember, the brush you choose will form the dot, so if you want a dotted line it is wise to choose a hard edge but small brush. I used 3px with a hardness of 100%.

Now we need to set up the brush settings. This is pretty easy, just click on this icon on (usually) right of your screen. Or hit F5 or go to Window > Brushes. Now you need to go to Brush Tip Shape and the only thing to alter is Spacing. Depending on how for you want the dots be separated from each other, set up the Spacing. I used the maximum value of 1000%.

Now just draw a line in your document and you will have a dotted line:

Of course this is a very random line, which doesn’t look very smooth, unless you have some drawing skills in drawing straight and curved lines. but wait, there are more tools in Photoshop! Remember the Pentool? Click on the Pentool icon or hit P, and make sure you have the following settings:

Now draw for example a curved line somewhere in your canvas by creating a New Work Path and a New Anchor Point. You can curve the line by holding the mouse when you added the last anchor point, and then keep holding it and moving the handles.

Now stroke the path: right mouse on your just created path and select Stroke Path. Then choose Brush and hit ok. Your path is now a dotted curved line! Delete the path, by right mouse > Delete Path or hitting Delete on your keyboard 2 times. And look, the dotted line remains:

This could also be applied to shapes, to create for example a dotted heart. That is not very hard. Go to Custom Shape Tool (hotkey: U), and choose the heart shape. Since we were already at the pentool, it is not far away. Use the same settings as for the Pentool.

Draw your heart somewhere, hit P or the Pentool icon and choose right mouse > Stroke Path. Do the same as we did for the Pentool and you will end up with this:

If we choose for example a smooth brush or a starry brush, we can get to results as in the picture below. This can be done by going to the brush tool (B) and selecting the starry brush. Now in the Brush Palette (F5 or Window > Brushes) deselect the Scattering and apply a Spacing of for example 150% (as you can see the right value of spacing depends on the kind of brush you chose, a value of 1000% would make the distance between the stars to big!). And now do the same as we did with our first heart. It will turn out like this:

If you have straight lines, either vertical or horizontal, or if you are not interested in the direction of the dots, it is also possible to use a simple pattern. Make a new document (Ctr+N or File > New) and make it 4 by 2px, with a transparent background. Select the Pencil Tool, make it 1px and draw something like below (zoom in!).

Then go to Edit > Define Pattern, and give it any name you want.

Go back to the document you already had, and use the Single Row Marquee Tool to draw a single line. Then use right mouse > Fill. Click Use Pattern and choose the pattern you just defined. Hit ok and deselect (Ctr-D or right mouse > Deselect) and you’re done! The size and shape of the dot is dependent on the shape of our pattern.

This will result in having a dotted line like below. Experiment with other patterns to get wonderful effects!

Creating Dotted Areas

The use of patterns was already introduced before, and here it will be used again. However, we can not use the pattern above, since that would result in straight lines. So first, open up a new document (Ctr+N or File > New), make it 11 by 11px with a transparent background. Use the pencil tool to place a single dot. It is best if it is placed right in the middle.

Now use (for example) the Rectangular Marquee Tool (hotkey: M) to make a rectangular selection. Now right mouse > Fill and then Use attern as we did before. Choose our new pattern, hit ok and we have a dotted area: