Placing text on a picture and enhancing it

---

By John Sweeney - 16th of January 2007

---

How would you like to put some text on a picture, either describing or labelling a scene or even placing someone's name on a picture and then making it look fancy or professional.

Text can be placed either Horizontal or vertical on a picture, all you have to do is select whichever you want on the text tool on the toolbar.

1. Open a picture, any picture, to practise with.
   
2. Select the text tool (Click T on your keyboard) and click on your picture. You will notice that a contextual bar open up just below the menu bar, thus allowing the user to select the font and the size etc. In the drop down size menu it at first appears that you are limited in the size of text you can chose because the numbers only go up to 72 points, well, guess what, this is not the case, you can actually put any number you like in the box, say 300 or 400 for example, just as long as it fits the picture.
   
3. Now type a word on your picture and when you are satisfied click enter on your keyboard, Now drag your word where ever you want it on your
   picture, you will notice on your layers pallet that a text layer has been
   produced, usually labelled layer 1. Now this is where the fun begins.
   
4. Move your cursor to the Layer 1 box, in the blue area, somewhere to the right of the words Layer 1 and double click.
   
5. A new pallet opens up, it's labelled as the layers style pallet and you will see lots of options on it.
   
6. Now, if you click the box towards the bottom of the pallet which says
   stroke a red line will be placed around the word you have typed, now, if
   you wish, you can just simply reduce the opacity and this will get rid of the typing and all you see is the red lines round the images of the letters, in fact it looks like a transparent word and you can see the original picture through it, this is in fact very limiting and really doesn't do much at all.
   
7. So, lets venture a little further, bring back the opacity so that the black shows through once again and this time click the area to the right of the word stroke, now the pallet changes and allows the user to do much more, just move the sliders about and you will see what I mean, start with the size slider at the top and move it to the right, you will see the red banding around your letters get bigger. Now, this works for all the options on the layers style pallet.
   
8. Lets now move to the bevel and emboss option and click to the right of the words, the pallet will change and give you more options, just play around with the sliders to choose which options suit you best, you will be amazed at the results.
   
9. When you have finished don't forget to flatten the image and save it, again Using another name etc.
   

Happy Typing, and remember keep experimenting for better results.