Circles w/o outlines, lines disappear

Question

I am new to drawing using APsE, so pardon me if this is a stupid question.
I am having a terrible time drawing a complex segmented circle. The outer circle I got from a file. I then drew 3-pixel black lines dividing the circle into 12 pie-shaped regions.
Problem 1: I wanted an inner circle that would be transparent fill but have a normal 3-pixel outline. Any circle I draw can have a black or white fill (but not a transparent one), and there doesn't seem to be any way to have the circle edge be black. The menu item Edit/Stroke Outline would seem to be the answer but it is always dimmed.
Temporary solution: I made the inner circle black-filled, then added another slightly smaller white-filled circle, and moved the latter over the black-filled circle so only the thin black outer edge showed, effectively giving me a circle with a black edge.
Problem 2: I still needed those 3-pixed lines dividing the inner circle into pie-shaped segments that matched the outer circle. I can draw only 1 pixel-wide lines (wider lines disappear - why is this?), but as soon as I draw a third line the second line disappears. For example, I can draw vertical and horizontal lines, but as soon as I draw a line 30 degrees off-vertical it one of the other lines disappears.
Temporary solution: None
I believe I went wrong when I started doing multiple circles. I would have no problem if I could just make an inner circle with the edge showing black but the inside being transparent.
BTW, I want to then select, in the inner circle, alternating pie shapes and filling them with black. If you see I am going to get into trouble doing that please let me know and offer a solution.
Thanks. I'm quite good at computers but graphics is like color to a blind person.
P.S. I am on Windows 7 64-bit SP-1 and Adobe Photoshop Elements 10.0
EdIsenberg

Answer 1

Create a new blank image.
Use the Elliptical Marquee tool to create a large circular selection.
Use Select...Save Selection to save the selection as "Large Circle".
Select...Transform selection, and drag one of the corners to make a smaller circle.
Select...Save Selection to save this as "Small Circle".
Create a new empty layer.
Load the large circle selection.
Stroke the selection with 3px black on the inside.
Create a new layer.
Load the small circle selection.
Stroke it with 3px black on the inside.
In the Layers Palette, highlight both layers containing stroked circles.
Choose the Move tool, and in its Options Bar use Align...Vertical Centers, then Align...Horizontal Centers.
At this point, your image looks like this:
and your layers look like this:
Create a new empty layer.
Use the Line tool and hold down the Shift key to draw a 3px horizontal line filled with black.
Simplify the line layer.
Hit Ctrl+J to duplicate the line layer.
With the Move tool, hold down the Shift key to rotate the copied line 30 degrees.
Repeat steps 19 and 20 until you have all the line segments drawn.
At this point your image looks like this:
and your layers look like this:
Highlight all the line segment layers, right-click on one of them in the Layers Palette and choose "Merge Layers" to get this layer arrangement:
On the merged layer, use Select...Load Selection to load the "Large Circle" selection.
Select...Inverse to invert the selection and hit your Delete key to trim the line segments.
Deselect All.
Use Ctrl+Alt+Shif+E (Stamp Visible) to create a new merged layer from all the layers.
Use the Fill tool on that merged layer to colour to your heart's content.
The final layers:
And the final image:
Added:
Whooooops!  I see that the line segments aren't centered in the circles.  Add step 24a:
24a.  Select the layers and use the Move tool's Alignment options to center everything.
After step 25, you might have to re-align the loaded selection with the image....
To get the transparency you want in the segments of the inner circle, simply select the segments with the Magic Wand and hit the Delete key, hide all the layers except the top one, then save the image as a PNG:
Ken
Message was edited by: photodrawken to add correction.