Motivation: Paint Shop Pro Text Tools allow for nifty special effects
Feature: Paint Shop Pro 8 or Paint Shop Pro 9

A lot of photo finishers shy away from text effects either because the text tools seems too complicated or they just don't think they can obtain the effects that they want. This series of tutorials using Paint Shop Pro will try to dispel both notions.

In the first exercise we add some text to a glass craft image. Note the use of a text fill color, light purple that is a compliment to the dominant orange. The text labeling is added in two parts: first "Glass is" then Classy..." because the font and fontsize will differ between the two text blocks. As wellthe final effects to be used will also vary

Note the settings used with theText tool. The Tool Options palette is used throughout this tutorial and can be activated by pressing the F4 key or the View | Palettes | Tool Options from the menus.The text tool has been set to use Create as: Floating - that will produce a filled floating selection. Because its a floating selection we can move the text block anywhere on the image. We can also apply most of the tools such as paint brush, dodge/burn/smear, just about any effect, etc. We have done so in the case of the "Glass is" text block - using the Effects | 3D Effects | Cutout command to obtain the rounded text look.

Note what was chosen for the "Classy..." text settings. Create as: Floating with a new Font: Impuls BT at a new Size: 72 but with the same Stroke width: 2 pixels (we dont want to bulk up the smooth lines of the calligraphic font). Do take advantage of the Stroke Width, Bold and Kerning settings to get the exact between-character spacing and character bulk right. Then we applied the Effects | 3D Effects | Drop Shadow followed by the Deform tool. We used the Deform tool last because it requires the floating selection to be converted to a raster layer which then takes away the ability to apply effects to just the chracters of the text.

The final image is shown at the left. Note how applying the Drop Shadow and deforming the "Classy" text to be bigger than the original 72 pixels adds emphasis to that word.

However we had a problem - a color imbalance which we used the Image | Add Border command to help correct. First using the dropper tool in the Add Border dialog, we chose the font color from the "Classy" text and then made that even a bit darker (just double click on the color sample). Then for the borders we took advantage of the fact that Paint Shop Pro allows users to adjust each border size individually and so we chose after a little trial and error Left: 10, Top: 5, Right: 20 and Bottom: 20. This skewed bordering then allows us to add a drop shadow. Using the Magic wand tool we selected the purple border, then Selections | Invert-ed that followed by a Effects | 3D Effects | Drop Shadow. Voila - a picture with caption.

The important point to take from this tutorial is that it is relatively simple to add text with special styling. Users could use the text tool to Create as: Vector - but then many effects and the Deform tool do not apply. So switch to the Floating option when using the Text tool for the ability to apply a much wider range of special effects.