# Converting Brush Strokes to Pencil Lines

After you draw variable-width strokes with the Brush tool, you can convert the brush stroke to a pencil line to reduce the number of points in the line with the Extract Center Line command.

Toon Boom Studio calculates the average of exterior points in a brush stroke to create a center line of points. You should convert your brush strokes to pencil lines before you ink them (changing their color).

If you have brush strokes with two different widths, Toon Boom Studio calculates the average of both widths to create a smooth pencil line with one width size.

To convert selected brush strokes to pencil lines:

1. Select View > Show Strokes to display the lines that compose your drawing objects.

2. Click the Select tool and click the brush strokes you want to convert. To select multiple brush strokes, press [Shift] and click the brush strokes.

3. Select Tools > Extract Center Line.

As soon as you activate the command, Toon Boom Studio converts the selected brush strokes to pencil lines. If the Show Stroke command is active, you can see the exterior contour line of the brush stroke move to the center to become a pencil line.

| Do not use Extract Center Line on painted zones. Painted zones are surrounded by points and then filled with color. When you Extract Center Line on a painted zone, you may get unexpected results.

See Also
Deleting Points from Vector Shapes
Reducing Drawing Layers with the Optimize Command
Reducing Drawing Layers with the Flatten Command
Removing Points with the Smooth Command
Merging Layers Using Draw Top Layer
Protecting Drawings