Paint Shop Pro Tutorials -- See-Through Text |
Creating See-Through Text with Paint Shop Pro
This tutorial was inspired by questions from one of the readers of this site :)
In the "Beyond the Basics" i.e. advanced techniques booklet that came with Adobe's PhotoShop 3 this particular trick caught my eye. I did something similar for the "Random Art" logo on my art page using Corel Draw. Someone then asked me recently how it was done and if he could do it using PSP. I hadn't even thought of doing it in PSP 3.xx but I thought it might be possible using 4.1. Well, it seems that Jasc Software Inc. has made an advanced technique fairly easy to do with their new version. Once you've seen what we're going to do, use your imagination and your web graphics will never be the same! What we're going to do is paste some simple text over another graphic, allowing that graphic to show through the letters.
This time we'll start with a prepared graphic. I'll use this swirl I created in Fractal Design's Painter while warming up one morning. You will, of course, use something else. This works really well, for example, with photos.
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| figure 6.1 |
Now, create a new graphic with the same dimensions as your photo or design. In this new graphic we need to add some text. I have the background color set to white and the foreground set to a dark blue. After selecting the text tool, find a font that will allow a large part of your photo to show through. I chose Comic San MS and set it to bold at 48 points. Since my graphic is set vertically and my text is horizontal, it would appear that I have a small problem as the large text doesn't fit. This is easily remedied; before de-selecting the text I used "IMAGE">> "ROTATE" with direction set to right and degrees set to 90. This turns the text. Perfect!
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| figure 6.2 |
Okay, here comes the trick(s). There is a small L-shaped two-headed arrow with the foreground/background swatch. Clicking on this swaps the foreground and background colors. Click on this arrow so that the foreground color becomes white and the background changes to blue.
Now from the menu select "SELECTIONS">>"SELECT ALL", then select "EDIT">>"COPY". Make the original graphic the current graphic by clicking in its menu bar. Select "EDIT">>"PASTE">>"AS TRANSPARENT SELECTION". You should see the graphic through the text, like this:
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| figure 6.3 |
This is a perfect trick to add to your arsenal... quickly now before this becomes as popular as shadowed text :)
Here's another photo I altered using this technique:
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| figure 6.4 |
That's it.... Be sure to check out some of our other Paint Shop Pro tutorials.
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