Photoshop

Technical Support Forum

I have photoshop and I have a question. I want to get the writing onto the image. For the writing I warped each individual letter seperate. Then I just moved them together to look like it was typed out. I was just messing around and I like it. Is there anyway of just trasnfering the type over onto the cool image?

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v397/chodder/photoshop.bmp

there are several ways to do it.. is the writing on a layer that has an alpha channel (transparency) around each letter, or is it just colored pixels surrounded by white pixels (edge to edge bitmap)?

if it's a layer with transparency, then you just copy the background bitmap above and add it as a new layer below the text layer:

1) Copy the background image from above by selecting it and copying it to the clipboard.

2) create new layer on the text layout and move it with the layers palette to be below the text.

3) paste the clipboard image onto the new layer.

If the text is just a bitmap however then you have to add a step: make a good selection to capture the text and delete the whitespace around it. There are many, many ways to do this, but here's a simple technique that I can describe easily:

1) take the magic wand tool and select the white space. do additional selections in the bowls of each letter to make sure all the white areas are grabbed. you can play with the tolerance threshold a bit to (say, 5 to 10 value) on the wand to increase the "closeness" of the selection.

2) once you've got all the white space selected, INVERT the selection.

3) modify the selection by shrinking it by 1 to 3 pixels

4) modify the selection by feathering it 1 to 1.75 pixels

5) CTRL-C copy your selection to the clipboard

6) CTRL-V paste it onto the background image above as a new layer.

You'll find that you will have a heck of a time getting the selection to come out quite right because you designed your text on a bright background and it is destined for a dark background - this makes the anti-aliasing incorrect. It would have been better to do the text on a black backgroun which is closer to the darkness of your background image, then it'd blend in much more easily no matter how poor your selection is.

Anyway, that's a start for ya.

Looks like he's got it covered.

I woulda just said to use the magic wand. Drop and drag. But you've got more options than I was even aware of!

I'm leaning towards just redoing the text over the image when I was playing around with the letters I didn't think I would get anyway and was just killing time so I did it over a blank background or a new document. I was hoping I could just copy and paste each letter from one doc to the other.

I just went back and opened up the one doc which has the writing and I went to use the type tool too click the letter to edit it but it wont let me. Why? Did it do that rasterize thing where after I save it I cannot edit it?

yep - it's rasterized. "warping" font characters is not an intrinsic capacity of vector fonts, so it rasterized them to permit you to do that.

Ok, I gave my problem to a friend who is really into Photoshop and...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v194/jagpoag/Chodda23new.png

I have another question. So instead of starting a new thread I figured I post it here.

How do I customize my Quick Launch on my Taskbar? The reason I ask this is because I accidentally deleted the 'show desktop' button. I loved that little guy. It was so easy to just press him and go straight to my desktop without having to close all my windows. I know I could always right click on my Taskbar and click ‘Show the desktop’ but I liked my button and want it back. Any ideas?

I don't know, but if you right-click on the task bar, you can do the same thing: select Show Desktop or Show Open Windows to restore them again whether or not it's in that quick launch bar. I'm not sure what the show desktop button logically is now that you ask. The other buttons are program shortcuts, but there's no shortcut associated with that one, so it's kinda funny... strange that they even let you delete it, really.

Here's the fix: http://www.techspot.com/vb/showpost...740&postcount=3

Next time try google - "deleted show desktop" was a REAL easy one..

Hmph. How do I 'make a file' ? I made a folder... but that isn't it.

Right click and do New -> Text Document then give it the correct filename. A new text document can be any empty file type you want.

OK, I created a new text document and titled it 'Show Desktop.scf'

Then I copy and pasted the following inside:

[Shell]
Command=2
IconFile=explorer.exe,3
[Taskbar]
Command=ToggleDesktop


I hit save and then it put a little text doc icon in my quick launch. I clicked it and then it just opened the text doc with the commands that I copy and pasted. It didn't take me to my desktop

Make sure it didn't rename the file to "Show Desktop.scf.txt" on you. Sometimes it does that lame crap.

Nope.