REVERSE TEXT ON A PATH

Created March 17, 2004© Copyright Moon's Designs
Property of Moon's Designs
This is my creation, any similarity to other tutorials on the Internet is unintentional.
Please do not copy or place this tutorial or any graphics to any other place without written permission directly from me. Thank you.

This tutorial is written in and for PSP8.10 and assumes you have a working knowledge of PSP at a Intermediate level, however I do try to write my tutorials so that even the beginner can do them.

YOU WILL NEED:
JASC's PSP8 (30 day free trial) - You can get it HERE

My tutorials are only guidelines to help you accomplish a certain creation. Please feel free to be inventive and take whatever liberties you would like. I encourage each of you to do your "own thing" and make your creation yours! Your finished creation is yours to do with as you please.

Screenshots are resized and compressed for faster loading. Don't forget to SAVE your work often.

I was inspired to write this tutorial after several saw my logo for my newest education CD "Working Smarter, Not Harder in PSP8". I will be going more in depth on that design on the CD, however I did want to write a tutorial for you to see how easy it is to do text on a reverse path in PSP8. I do have a tutorial on how to do this for PSP7 but I do find it much easier to do in PSP8. We will be working with vectors, text, the pen tool, the object selector tool and the copy merge feature in the edit menu, just to name a few.

Step 1:
Open a new image 400x400, raster background, transparent.

The first thing that you want to do is SAVE that image in .pspimage format. Click on F12, or go to File/Save As, and give your image a name, you can always change it later. You want to save frequently so you don't lose your work. Choose the color that you want your text on the Background Materials swatch. I have black for my foreground and a purple (#6C06DE) for my background.

Step 2:
Activate your preset shapes tool, , set to Ellipse for your shape, retain style, create as vector, anti-alias all checked.

To make a circle, hold down your shift key and starting from the upper left corner draw down and to the right. If you draw from any other way it will cause your text to go backwards or upside down. You will have a bounding box around your circle.

Step 3:
Let's center our circle on our canvas. Activate your Object Selector tool, , and on the tools option palette choose center on canvas. Your circle will now be centered for you.

Step 4:
Activate your text tool, , choose Vector for your Create As, your font and size, and 0.00 for line width. I used Garamond at size 36. Anti-Alias Checked, alignment center.

Hover your mouse as close to the top node as possible until you see the rocking A. Click on your canvas.

Enter your text in the Text Entry Box. I typed in Paint Shop Pro8 Rocks. Click Apply.

See how the text curves around the ellipse? You will also see a bounding box around your text.

Step 5:
Go to your layer palette. On your layer palette you will see a plus sign next to your Vector Layer, click on the plus sign and it will become a minus sign and you can see what is in the layers.

Right click on your text, mine is Paint Shop Pro 8 Rocks, Convert text to curves as a Single Shape.

Step 6:
Click on the Ellipse layer. Activate your Pen tool, . You will see that your bounding shape around your circle has disappeared and you now have 4 nodes. Look at your bottom center node and see how the arrow is pointing.

Right click on the bottom node, choose edit and then reverse path.

You will now see the arrow going in the opposite direction.

Step 7:
Activate your text tool and get your rocking A as close to the bottom node as possible. NOTE: There are times, and I am not sure why, that when you click on the text tool after doing the previous step that your background material goes to transparent. So please make sure that your background color is showing on your Materials Palette Background Swatch.

Click on your canvas and type your text in your text box. I used Moon's Designs this time.

You will see that the text places inside of your circle and you want it to be on the outside of the circle. Because we have made our text as a vector you can edit your text. Right click on your text and go to Edit Text.

Highlight your text and change the leading number in your tools option palette. I changed mine to MINUS 550.

Now your text is under your circle.

Have you been saving?? If not do so now!

Step 8:
Click on any other tool, I used the pan tool, to remove your bounding boxes. Go to your Layer Palette and hide the Ellipse layer by clicking on the Eye.

This is how my text looks after I hid the ellipse layer and went to another tool.

As I stated earlier, because you have your text set up as vector you may edit your text at any time - as long as you don't have the layer converted to a raster layer. You are going to want to save your image with vectors intact. Now you could duplicate your image and then merge the layers visible however let's Work Smarter, Not Harder. ~smiles~

Step 9:
Go to Edit/Copy Merged. This will merge all of your layers and copy them into one image. Go to Edit/Paste/As New Image (Ctrl+V). Your image is now on one raster layer and all merged for you, plus your original image is intact as a .pspimage.

Step 10:
After you have your new image make sure you save it, with a different name as before. Now let's add a drop shadow to our text. Go to Effects/3D Effects/Drop Shadow and use the following settings.

Step 11:
Now let's add a balls and bubbles preset to our text. Add a new raster layer. Activate your Selections Tool, . Choose Circle for your shape, replace mode, anti-alias checked. Place your cursor in the middle of your canvas at coordinates 200x200. You can either look at your status bar to see your coordinates, , or if you click on the info tab on your overview palette you can find your coordinates there.

Draw out your circle. Keep it selected.

Step 12:
Go to Effects/Artistic Effects/Balls and Bubbles. Choose one of the presets that JASC has provided. For this tutorial I chose the Woven Ball preset.

Save your image. If you would like to put it on a web page, as I did above, add a new raster layer. Layers/Arrange/Send to Bottom and the flood fill with your tile for your web page. Merge your layers flatten and you are set to go.

I sure hope you have enjoyed this tutorial as much as I have creating it for you. If you have any problems, comments or questions please do not hesitate to E-mail me.

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Tutorial written and created by Patti Wavinak for Moon's Designs. These Tutorials are copyrighted by law. You may LINK to them only. You may not remove any of the graphics, zip files or html within these pages to reproduce these Tutorials, without the expressed permission of Moon's Designs. These pages may not be removed from this website and sent via e-mail, nor saved, stored or archived in files in YahooGroups or other mailing list sites, nor may they be translated and placed on another site.
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