Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 14. Text in Elements
Elements makes it easy to add text to images. You can quickly create all kinds of fancy text
to use in greeting cards, as newsletter headlines, or as graphics for web pages.
Elements also gives you lots of ways to jazz up text: You can apply layer styles, effects, and
gradients to it, or warp it into psychedelic shapes. And the Type Mask tools let you fill indi-
vidual letters with the contents of a photo. Best of all, most of Elements' type tools let you
change text with just a few clicks (see
Figure 14-1
).
And that's not all. You also get three special tools for making artistic text: Text on Selection,
Text on Shape, and Text on Custom Path, which let you create text that swoops and turns, or
make text run around the edge of an object. You can create very dramatic text effects with
these tools, which are covered beginning on
Artistic Text
.
By the time you finish this chapter,
you'll know all the ways Elements can add pizzazz to text.
Adding Text to an Image
It's a cinch to add text to an image in Elements. Just activate a type tool, choose a font in the
Tool Options area, and then type away. The type tools' icon in the Tools panel is easy to re-
cognize: It's a capital T. (It lives at the bottom left of the Draw section.) You can also activ-
ate it by pressing T.
Elements actually gives you
seven
different type tools, all of which you can see in the type
tools' Tool Options area: the Horizontal Type tool, the Vertical Type tool, the Horizontal
Type Mask tool, the Vertical Type Mask tool, the Text on Selection tool, the Text on Shape
tool, and the Text on Custom Path tool. You'll learn about the Type Mask and “Text on…”
tools later in this chapter; this section focuses on the regular Horizontal and Vertical Type
tools. As their names imply, the Horizontal Type tool lets you enter text that runs left to right,
while the Vertical Type tool is for creating text that runs down the page.
When you use the type tools, Elements automatically puts the text you create on its own lay-
er, which makes it easy to throw out what you've typed and start over. When a type tool is
active, Elements creates a new Text layer each time you click your image.
