CREATING TEXT ON A PATH – PHOTOSHOP CS and CS2 TUTORIAL
By Kim Hill
If you have any questions about this tutorial, please contact me at [email protected]
In this tutorial, you will learn how to apply your text in a variety of shapes.
First, open up a new document that is 4 inches square and 300 dpi. You can make the text and document
any size you want in the future, but for this tutorial we will work with 4 inches.
Go to the shape tools in your tool box on the left side of your screen. It is the ninth icon down on the right.
If you click and hold that down, you will see a few different options for various shapes. For our first lesson,
we will do a simple circle. So grab the Ellipse Tool.
Now we will need to create our path for the text to follow. So go up to the options bar at the top of your
screen. You will see a few different options on the left. You will choose the Paths tool as shown here.
Let’s draw a perfect circle path. To do this, hold your shift key while click/dragging the mouse. Holding
the shift key keeps it proportionate. If you want an oval, just don’t hold the shift key.
Now the fun begins. We are going to add the text to the path. To do this, you will need your text tool
which is the large T in your tool box. Click on that and hold it and you will see several options.
Select the Horizontal Type Tool as this will make your text read from left to right in a horizontal direction.
Now open up your character palette and choose a font you want to use. I am going to use Garamond since
it is an easy-to-read font. I am going to set the font at pixels.
Now you will go back to your circle path and hover your mouse over the line. If at any time you can’t see
your path line, simply press Control-H and it will unhide your path. Similarly, if you don’t want to see the
path any longer, pressing Control-H will hide it. Go ahead and try it – hide, unhide. LOL
Okay, so back to the hovering your mouse over the path line. You will notice your mouse will suddenly
change appearance to what looks like a letter I with squiggly top and bottom. When you see the mouse
change, click your mouse one time. This will activate the text tool and you can begin typing. When you
are done entering your text, click on your arrow tool in the top of your tool box to disengage the text tool.
If your text is not lined up where you want it, you can transform the text on the path by rotating it in the
direction you want. To do this, click on Edit / Transform Path / Rotate. You will see a box with corner
handles which you can use to rotate the text to where you want it to be.
Now if you find that you need to change the font, or make the font bigger, or spread it out a little more, you
can still do that. All you need to do is grab your text tool and highlight the text. Then go to your character
Palette and make any necessary adjustments.
And that is how you do the basic text on a path. Now if you want to have your text flow on the INSIDE of
the shape, we will need to make a slight modification. Go to your tool box and click on the black arrow to
the left of your text tool. This is the Path Selection Tool. If you hold it down, there are two options. You
want the Path Selection Tool which is black, not the Direct Selection Tool.
Once you have selected that, hover your mouse over the text area. You will notice that the cursor will
change and it will display a small black arrow. When you see the change, click, hold and drag your mouse
so that the text moves from the outside of the path to the inside of the path.
Now if you would prefer your text to be vertically on the path, you will have to start over. Follow this
tutorial from the beginning. But where you would select your horizontal text tool, instead you will now
select the vertical text tool and then begin typing.
If you want to put your text on a different shape, like a heart or star, or whatever, you can do that too. Start
the tutorial from the beginning. And instead of selecting the Ellipse Tool, you will select the Custom
Shape Tool.
Now up at the top of your screen you will see an icon in the options bar showing your custom shape. There
are quite a few shapes that come pre-loaded with PhotoShop for you to choose from. You can also
download more custom shapes from the internet here:
http://www.freephotoshop.com/html/free_shapes.html
Then you can follow the rest of the tutorial as it is written above. It should be noted that the more involved
shapes are going to be more difficult to get your text to flow nicely. So you will need to play within the
character palette and adjust the kerning and font size until you get it looking nice. Have fun with this!!