Adobe Community: Message List - Tutorial: Text around a circle in PSE10

Re: Tutorial: Text around a circle in PSE10

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Sat, 09 Jun 2012 17:23:36 GMT

You're welcome!

Ken

Re: Tutorial: Text around a circle in PSE10

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Sat, 09 Jun 2012 16:34:58 GMT

Thanks Ken! I was searching how to do this and found your tutorial. This was very helpful!

ClearInk8

Re: Tutorial: Text around a circle in PSE10

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 22:01:12 GMT

Thanks, all, for your kind words!

If what I saw on the PaintShop Pho forum is any indication, creating this kind of text on a circle is one of the most common questions -- hopefully this tutorial will help PSE newbies.

Barbara --

I like that idea of expanding a selection because the expanded selection will be automatically centered. I'm just used to working with paths, so I went with this.

When I get around to posting a "Tips" discussion let's see what we all can add to it. (That method of clicking inside an existing selection took me a while to discover.)

Ken

Re: Tutorial: Text around a circle in PSE10

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 18:45:36 GMT

Very nice, Ken!

You can also just click with the magic wand to select the background, invert the selection and use Select>Modify>Expand to make your larger circle. You can add text to any existing selection as long as you click once inside the selection with the selecting part of the tool and click the green checkmark to turn it to a path. For this particular example, it's not necesssarily any easier, but it makes it possible to add text to any kind of irregular shape, not just the few shapes in the text-on-shape tool.

Re: Tutorial: Text around a circle in PSE10

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 18:25:19 GMT

Wonderfully explained !

Thanks Ken... Soon I will be trying this and post a similar one at http://bit.ly/plFUdD

Tutorial: Text around a circle in PSE10

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 05:10:43 GMT

I've been experimenting with the new Text on a Path tools in PSE10 for a couple of days, and since the Help files are somewhat sparse about them, I thought I'd share what I've learned. This tutorial will cover the specific technique of creating text around a circle. Another post will have some miscellaneous tips about using the new Text tools.

So, here's the text effect we want -- right-reading text above and below a circle:

Select the "Text on Shape" tool and choose the "Ellipse" shape in the Options bar.
Start dragging out an ellipse, holding down the Shift key to constrain it to being a circle. Just estimate a circle a little bit larger than the image for now -- we can fine-tune it later. As long as you keep holding down the Left Mouse Button, the tool will be in "shape" mode. When you release the LMB, the tool shifts into "text" mode. Move the cursor to the top of the circle, above the circle, until the cursor changes into the "text bar entry" cursor and then enter your text. Click on the green checkmark button in the Options bar when you're done to commit the text. What happens is that the text and the path become linked together on the text layer. At this point, the image looks something like this:
With the text layer selected, hit the Ctrl+T keys to enter the "Shape Free Transform" mode. Now you can move and re-size the text's circular path. When you've got the path sized and centered over the image, click on the green check mark and the text will jump into its new position and alignment as slick as hog fat on a hot stove. You'll have something that looks like this:
Select the "Text on Shape" tool if it's not already selected and drag out another circle, making it noticeably larger than the first one. Releasing the LMB puts you into "text" mode, and when moving the text cursor hold down the Ctrl key to allow you to place the text cursor on the inside of the circular path. Enter your text for the bottom, and commit the text by hitting that green check mark. You'll have something that looks like this (on its own new text layer):
As before, with this new text layer selected hit the Ctrl+T keys to enter the "Shape Free Transform" mode. Now you can adjust the size and position of the text's circular path. This will require quite a bit of fussing around to get the size of the circular path and its position just right, then click the "OK" check mark to get the final result:

That's it -- you're done! Granted, it's not as intuitive as other applications, but until Adobe gets its shirt together and gives us better text options like "baseline shift" and "kerning", it's all we've got.

Of course, you can go nuts with special effects since the text on shapes are text and remain editiable:

Enjoy!

Ken