Text in Elements - Photoshop Elements 13: The Missing Manual - page 773

handy if your image doesn't give this tool much to work with. Just make a selection be-
fore you use this tool; that way, when you activate the Text on Selection tool, you should
see the Commit and Cancel icons in the image. (If you don't, click once inside the selec-
tion to make them appear.) Click the Commit checkmark and you've got yourself a path.
▪ Move the text inside or outside the path . Figure 14-15 explains how to change where
the text appears.
▪ Move the text's starting point . If you start typing and then wish you'd started some-
place else on the path, go ahead and commit the text anyway. Then make sure Text on
Selection is still selected in the Tool Options and that the Text layer is active (if it isn't,
click it in the Layers panel), and you should see a circle at the beginning of the text's
baseline. Grab that and drag it to move the text where you want it. (If you have trouble
doing this, you can also click over to the Shape Selection tool [ The Shape Selection
Tool ] and grab the text with that tool instead.)
▪ Resize the text . If you wish you'd made the text larger or smaller or that you'd used a
different font, that's easy to fix. With any of the text tools active, head over to the Layers
panel and double-click the Text layer's T icon to select all the text on it. Then, in the Tool
Options area, change the text's font or size till you like what you see. (You can also use
the Move and Transform tools on the text, but if you want to change only the letters and
not the overall size of the selection, this is the best way to do it.)
▪ Resize your selection . Anytime after you create a selection with this tool but before you
commit the text, you can hold down Ctrl/ ⌘ and you'll see the Move tool's handles ap-
pear in your image. Drag one, and the text will follow the new shape. Or, after you com-
mit the text, you can use the Move tool to drag a handle. Both methods resize the selec-
tion as well as the letters. Just don't try to make the text a lot bigger this way, or it may
start to look pixelated.
The one thing you can't do is adjust the spacing of individual letters, unfortunately. Despite
this limitation, the Text on Selection tool is great for adding text to your images in ways that
are much more interesting than boring straight lines.
Making Text Outline a Shape
You can also make text outline the shape of a heart or butterfly, for example. This is very
popular for scrapbooking and projects like greeting cards. It works pretty much the same way