Text on a Circular Path with Photoshop

Via our Contact Us page The Photoshop Nuts were asked if we could explain how to put text on a circle.

This was covered a while back by Michael Hoffman in his post Working With Type On a Path as a written tutorial but I thought I’d create a video for those that prefer to learn that way too.

In the video, I also explain a technique for creating concentric circles and explain why you’d want to have two windows displaying one image.

Cutting the fringe – Selective Colour in Photoshop

Originally posted at TipSquirrel.com
Photoshop Nut : Scot Baston

---

I encountered a little problem the other day while creating something in Photoshop.. not my usual photography but pulling some low resolution text from a black background. Normally the route would be to create a selection and to use refine mask to remove any stray edges of the background. In this case the text was so small and with the compression on the original file, the refine edge option was not working for me, especially when you add in the complexity of the shape. Below is an example of what I had to work with..

my final image would be on a white background, so lets try the normal route first
 
As you can see, selecting the black background and using refine edge did not create the best result when shown on a white background. I'm sure better could be achieved by taking the time, zooming in to the text and using the refine edge brush around each of the letters.. but who has time for that? First steps first.. lets select the text from the black background. Using the Magic Wand tool (W), set the tolerance to around 10 and uncheck the contiguous checkbox.. then select the black background

   

 With the Background selected, create an inverted layer mask by holding down the Alt key and clicking the 'add layer mask' button at the bottom of the layer mask panel.

 

 Adding a simple white background layer underneath the cut out layer shows our current text with accompanying black fringe.

 

 So how to get rid of the horrible black fringe without losing the feel of the text and without spending ages refining the mask. My solution was to use the Selective Colour Adjustment Layer...

Continue Reading >>

From The TipSquirrel.com Archive : Stripy Text with Photoshop Layer Styles

Originally posted at TipSquirrel.com
Photoshop Nut : Simon Rudd

---

More text antics with Photoshop. We shall try and create this...

 

Step 1.

Start by creating a new Photoshop Document, I used 1024x768 at 72 ppi, but as always its really up to you. I then set my background Colour to Red #c0292f, you can either just fill the Background Layer with red or create a new Layer and colour that red.

Step 2.

Next reset the Swatches to default by pressing D on your keyboard, follow this by pressing X to swap the foreground and background and make White the foreground colour. Choose the Text Tool and select the font Impact (or anything else big and bold), set the size to 150. Type something on on your screen.

Step 3.

We are now going to add some Layer Styles to our text, you can do this by going to Layer > Layer Style > or by pressing the fx button on the bottom of the Layer Palette. First Choose the Bevel and Emboss style and perform the following actions (most of them are the default styles) Set the Gloss Contour to the preset Ring(bottom row, 2^nd in) Next add a Inner Glow, Stroke Finally add a Gradient Overlay as in the picture finally reduce the Fill Opacity of the Layer to 24%

Step 4.

Next we are going to add a new Layer above the Text Layer and fill it with clouds by going to Filter > Render > Clouds. This will generate a random selection of cloud like texture over the picture. Next we want to put a selection around the Text, you can easily do this by holding the Control Key on your Keyboard and clicking the Text Layer. Now making sure you are on your clouds Layer create a new Layer Mask. Layer > Layer Mask > Reveal Selection. Finally reduce the Fill opacity to 30%.

Step 5.

We want to now use the Line tool, set the size to 50 pixels and draw a series of lines across the text as in the picture below...

Step 6

Select all of your stripes layers in the Layer Palette (hold control and click once on each one) and the clip them to the Clouds Layer, Layer > Create Clipping Layer. You can now put things under the text and they will show through... Hope you enjoyed this tutorial :) Please look out for me on Twitter and say hello, also have a look at my website http://www.simonrudd.info