This week I’m not going to be looking at everything the Pen tool can do, simply a quick shortcut that make the Pen tool a whole lot more effective.

So say you’re tracing the outline of an object using the Pen tool, because it’s a lot better than the Lasso for selection, and you draw out a large bézier curve and come across an abrupt change in direction. Normally if you clicked with the Pen tool after a large curve it would loop back round like it does below.

However if you Alt + Click on the last Pen tool point it resets the curve extrapolation and allows you to change direction and angle dramatically, letting it go round right angles and the like.

Alt + Click on the point to reset it

Now you can change the angle dramatically