Picture Text

Banners and logo's are everywhere you go on the web. But why stick with just a boring, black, Times New Roman text banner? Try this instead!

Creating your Banner

Creat a new canvas the exact dimensions of your required banner and apply a background colour, if required.

Click the Text tool and click in the canvas.

Select the font and font size of your choice (the colour is unimportant, but the effect works best with bold, chunky fonts!).

Type the required text into the Text Editor and click O.K. when done.

Centre the text block in the document.

Click FILE>IMPORT and browse to select the image file that you wish to use for your "picture text".

Click on the canvas to import the image. You will see at this point that the blue "selection" lines extend beyond your canvas (they show the full extent of the imported image), but the new image is only visible where it overlays the original canvas.

While it is still selected, click EDIT>CUT.

Click on the text block to select it.

Then click EDIT>PASTE INSIDE.

Bingo! Pretty cool banner!

You may think you're pretty happy with that, but if you click on the text to select it, you will see a small blue "grab handle" appear in the centre of the image. This handle can be click/dragged to "slide" the imported image around inside the original text, until you get the best effect.

You can even re-size the text image by click/dragging the corner handles of the frame, but it does degrade the image. (Unfortunately, you can no longer consider the graphic as "text", so the Text Editor is no longer available to change font size!). It's best to get the sizes right at the start! You can now apply whatever Effects/Fills you have a hankering to apply (such as Inner Glow, Gaussian Blur, Drop Shadow etc.) before exporting the finished product. My header image was treated to a dose of EFFECTS>SHADOW AND GLOW>INNER SHADOW, coupled with a sprinkling of EFFECTS>BEVEL AND EMBOSS>INSET EMBOSS! By simply applying the INNER SHADOW effect, the text now looks like a "cut-out" frame, with another image floating below it!

Experiment!!!