Watch the video above then read the instruction below which document the actions taken in the video. The video above is intended as a visual indicator of where to go next, the detail of the tutorial is contained within the textual content of the page below:

Adding Text to an image is quite a simple process and anyone who has added text to a word document and manipulated the Size and Font will be able to do so in Photoshop. For the purposes of this demonstration I have added text then edited Font and Size which is very similar to many other applications then to demonstrate some of the functions specific to Photoshop I have manipulated the format of the text.

To start open an image or create a new canvas.

In the video above I have used an image I created earlier to illustrate how text can be overlayed on an image. Text will automatically be placed on its own layer so that it floats over the background image and this allows for manipulation of the composition once you have added the required text.

As you can see on the video I have simply selected the Text Tool and clicked within the image roughly where I want my text to go, I have not worried too much about positioning as I am going to adjust that once I have added the text. Once typed I select the text to indicate the text I wish to adjust the I go to the Options Bar and select the Font Size, I make several Font Size adjustments before getting something I am satisfied with. The first few adjustments I used the preset sizes within the drop down menu, then I overtype the last value to increase the size beyond what is available within the presets. This can be done for any font size required and the presets are only there as a quick option to allow you to get something near to your requirements before manually adjusting to exactly the right size.

Within the Options Bar for the Text Tool there is the option to 'Change text orientation' this allows you to switch between text writing from left to right and top to bottom. Next you have the Font options which allows you to select the appropriate font for you image. Then we have the Font Style options which are, Regular, Bold, Italic, Bold Italic, after this we have the font size which can be manually typed into the value box or selected from presets within the drop down menu. After these fairly standard text options you have an options to set the Anti-aliasing method which enables you to select how the edges of the text appear within you image. It is worth playing with the Anti-Alias method for example if your image is to be embedded within a web page where text appears without Anti-aliasing then you can set the Anti-alising method to "None" so that the text on the image is consistent with text in the page (if that is important to you). After the Anti-alising method there are buttons that allow you to select the alignment of the text, pretty standard options that are presented in much the same way in all applications that deal with text.

In the video above once I am happy with the size and positioning of the text (with the Move Tool selected you can use the arrow buttons on you keyboard for greater control than available by drag and drop) I have had a play with the Layer Style and Transform function.

In the video I go into Layer - Layer Styles and add a Drop Shadow and then adjust the size and depth of the shadow to something that looks appropriate to the image, I dont spend much time doing this as it is tackled within a different tutorial (Layer Styles). I also use the Layer Styles to Bevel the text but I remove this by clicking back through the image History once applied as I feel that this effect simply mucky's up the text (I will often try thinks and remove them if they don't work as they may not work on that image but my be stored for future images).

I use the Transform function to elongate the height of the text which now makes it vary from the standard font and can make text look slightly more original. In the video above I don't think that it does a great deal for the look of the text but we will leave it in the video to illustrate the principal. When I have dragged the text to the size I am happy with I click the Tick icon on the option bar to accept the changes and the transformation is applied.

There is much more that can be done to text especially if you are creating a logo where you want something quite distinctive and out of the ordinary, we will come back to this in another tutorial.

<< Back | Home | Forward >>