Text Shaping in Photoshop

By David Peters

One of the great advantages of using Photoshop CS2 is its tremendous versatility. In addition to applying great effects to images, you can also use Photoshop to manipulate text.

Photoshop's Warp Text tool allows you to wrap or bend text around an object in your image to make attention-grabbing, personalized banners or headlines. You can also warp text in both horizontal and/or vertical directions to give your text an individual look and feel. Photoshop has many means by which to manipulate text, but this will provide a starting point that will especially come in handy if you have not had the chance to use these text features before.

Start off by opening an image that you would like to add text to. Select the horizontal tool from your toolbar and click in the area of the image close to where you would like to add your text to. Now type in the text you would like to add. Adding standard text enhancements such as italics, bold or underline can also be applied while in text mode.

After you have completed your text, select and right-click the text to open the contextual menu. Open the Warp Text dialogue box by selecting Warp Text. This box will contain a list of pre-defined text warps to choose from using the Style pull-down menu. Simply select the warp that best fits the look you want to reach. Try out some of the different warp effects to see what they look like if you are not quite sure which one might work best for you.

There will be several sliders under the Style pull-down that will allow you to make fine-tuning adjustments to the warp effects. You can change the horizontal and vertical distortion and the text bend here. An option to using the sliders is to enter a percentage value for these properties. Once you have reached the effect desired, simple click OK and the Warp Text effect will be applied to your image.

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