Solid bordered ellipse with transparent background in Photoshop?

Question

This has to be a silly question but I cannot see how, in Photoshop CS5, to draw a red bordered ellipse with a transparent fill over a picture. I often find myself doing this to highlight an area of a screenshot when posting an image to StackOverflow or sending an email to IT support.

In Adobe Fireworks it is pretty easy:

1. Select the ellipse tool
2. Set the fill to transparent
3. Set the pen to red
4. Draw the ellipse

It is straightforward following the same steps in Microsoft Paint.

But in Adobe Photoshop the ellipse tool seems to only have one colour

I could draw the solid red ellipse and then draw another slightly smaller ellipse to mask out the central region but that seems too long-winded for what must be a commonplace simple task.

What is the speedy lightweight way to call out an area of a picture by plonking a solid bordered ellipse with a transparent fill on it in Photoshop?

Answer 1

Simply use the Ellipse Tool to draw an ellipse and set the Fill to none and the Stroke to whatever you want.

Edit: For versions of Photoshop older than Photoshop CS6

Simply set the Fill Opacity to 0% and add a stroke Layer Style