How to Use the Polygon Tool in Photoshop

Finding the Tool and Setting Sides

The Polygon tool is nested under the Rectangle tool – click and hold that icon to reveal it. The first setting to look at is the number of sides in the options bar. Three gives you a triangle, six a hexagon, eight an octagon. Click and drag to draw, and hold Shift while dragging to constrain rotation to 15-degree increments so your shape sits perfectly level.

Polygon Tool Fill and Stroke

Because the shape stays a vector object, you can change its appearance at any time – just reselect the Polygon tool and the fill and stroke controls come back. Both fill and stroke can be set to none, a solid color, a gradient or a pattern, and stroke has its own width control. With the color picker open you can move your cursor onto the image to sample a color straight out of the photo. Save the file, come back to it tomorrow, and every one of those settings is still editable.

Vector vs. Raster

You could draw a triangle with the Polygonal Lasso and stroke the selection instead, but you would be stuck with the result. Scale that up and the edges go soft and jagged. A polygon shape layer scales infinitely with perfectly clean edges. The small badge on the layer thumbnail tells you the layer is vector-based.

Polygon Tool Modes: Shape, Path or Pixels

The Polygon Tool’s mode dropdown offers three options. Shape creates an editable vector layer. Path creates a work path in the Paths panel, which you can Ctrl/Cmd-click to turn into a selection – handy for masking an adjustment layer to a shape. Pixels bakes the shape into the current layer as raster pixels. The recommendation is simple: always use Shape. You can get everything the other two offer from a shape layer – right-click and Rasterize Layer to convert it to pixels, or Ctrl/Cmd-click its thumbnail for a selection – while keeping all the vector advantages until you decide otherwise.

Shape Interactions and Alignment

The path operations dropdown controls how a new shape interacts with one already on the layer: New Layer (the default), Combine Shapes, Subtract Front Shape, Intersect Shape Areas and Exclude Overlapping Shapes. Alignment controls also appear here, though lining shapes up with the Move tool – Ctrl/Cmd-click both layers, then use the alignment buttons – tends to work better.

Polygon Tool Smooth Corners and Stars

The gear icon in the Polygon Tool options bar holds two extras. Smooth Corners rounds off every point of the polygon. Star pulls the sides inward, turning any polygon into a star, with an indent percentage you control. Clicking once on the canvas instead of dragging opens a dialog where you can type exact values – a 10-point star, for example. Push a 20-sided polygon to a small indent and you get something very close to a prize ribbon.

Polygon Tool Quick Reference

• Nested under the Rectangle tool – click and hold to find it
• Sides in the options bar sets the shape (3 = triangle, 6 = hexagon)
• Shift + drag – constrain rotation to 15-degree steps
• Keep the mode on Shape for maximum flexibility
• Ctrl/Cmd + click the layer thumbnail – turn the shape into a selection
• Gear icon – Smooth Corners and Star options