Create Text on a Path in Adobe Photoshop - A Graphic Design for Lunch™ Class

1. Text on a Path in Photoshop - Introduction: Hello, I'm Helen Bradley. Welcome to this Graphic Design for Lunch Class, Create Text on a Path in Adobe Photoshop. Graphic design for lunch is a series of classes that teach a range of tips and techniques for creating designs and for working in applications such as Illustrator, Photoshop, and Procreate. Today we're looking at creating text on a path in Photoshop. We're going to work with the text tools to see how you can add text to a path in Photoshop. Then we're actually going to look at a practical example of doing just that. As you're working through these videos, you might see a prompt which lets you recommend this class to others. Please, if you're enjoying the class, give it a thumbs up. These recommendations help me get my classes in front of more people who just like you, want to learn more about Photoshop. If you'd like to leave a comment, please do so. I read and respond to all of your comments, and I look at and respond to all of your class projects. Now let's get started on creating type on a path in Photoshop. 2. Text on a Path - Part 1: To get started creating type on a path in Photoshop, I've just created a document that's 1,000 by 1,000 pixels in size, and I have a bottom layer that is filled with white. I was going to click to add a new layer and we're going to put our text on this. But first of all we're going to draw a path for our text and we're going to the dreaded Pen Tool. I promise you this is going to be really simple. I'm going to click on the "Pen Tool" and I'm just going to click and drag upwards heading towards the top right-hand corner of the document. I'm going to go to about this position here and click and drag downwards. I don't want it to be a very long drag, I just want it to get a nice little curve there. Then let's head back up here, and let's just click and drag to finish off with a nice curve. You've got this loopy curve. I'm going to press "Escape" just to finish off drawing my path. If you don't like the path that you've created you can just select over it and press "Delete" and start again. I'm going to stick with this one though. Next up I'm going to the Text Tool, and I'm going to hover over the path. In Photoshop, you're going to use the Text Tool. There is no type on a Path Tool, it just is the Horizontal Type Tool. You're going to hold your mouse pointer over the path until you get the I-beam pointer with this wiggly line through it. That tells you that Photoshop is recognizing that there's a path there, and if you click now, you're going to add text to that path. Let's just start typing. Now very quickly you're going to find that you run out of space for your text and regardless of how much you type it's just going to disappear. The reason for this is that these little three markers, are the left, center, and right edge of my text. There's not a lot of room for my text. Now either I could continue to type now and sort that out later on or I could sort it out now. Since I really suck at typing I want to sort it out now because I need to see things as I type so I can correct my mistakes. I'm going now to select here on the Direct Selection Tool, that's the white arrow Tool. Now I can just hover over these shapes here, and I can see the pointers that allow me to manage my type. Well, the one over here that when I hover over it has a little arrow pointing to the right, is the left margin of the text and it's as far along that line as it can be. That's not the one I need to move, it's this one here. I'm just hovering my mouse over it until I see an I-beam pointer with a left pointing arrow. That's the right margin for my text. As soon as I see it, I can click and drag it all away along to the end of my path. Now I'm going to ignore the fact that it's rolled over my path because if I just move up, I can pull it back in. Vertical movement here is going to flip the text along the path. But what I want to do is make sure that this shape appears right at the end so I've got plenty of room for my text. Now I'm going back to my Text Tool, and you can probably guess that I have sent a text turned on, because this text is now centered between the left margin and the right margin. If I were to choose left alignment the text will move over and we'll sit on the left margin, the little marker here that marks the left margin of the text. If I click the right align that it's going to appear over here on the right margin. I'm going back to center text and I'm just going to click with my type Tool just after the letter S so I can pick up where I'm typing. The mouse pointer is now at an angle to the line and it's flickering on and off so that's telling me I'm back in my text on a line typing mode. I can continue to type. When I click away from the line using a Tool such as the Marquee Tool, you can see that you're not seeing a line but you are seeing text on the line. Here in the path pallet you'll see that you have your path. This is the path that is controlling the text. If you were to go to the Direct Selection Tool here, and click on any of these points on the path, you can actually adjust them so you can make the line more or less curved, and you can alter any of these points just as you could any path in Photoshop. When you alter this, the text is going to reform along that path. If you go to the Path Selection Tool here, then you can just click on the path. You want to make sure that the indicator is this black arrow, not any of these text on the Path Tools this is not the one you want. You want this arrow, and now you can select your path and move it. When you do the text comes with it, the text is pretty much fixed to this path. This is a little bit tricky sometimes to make sure that you actually have the path selected and not one of these text on a path tools. You can also create text on a circular path. I'm going here to the Ellipse Tool, and I'm going to click "Path." In earlier versions of Photoshop you would have three icons here not the drop-down menu, but you just want path. Going to hold Shift as I drag out a circle. I'm going to my Text Tool, going to hover over the path and start typing. Working with text on a circular shape in Photoshop, can be a little bit challenging until you realize what Photoshop's drawing. Let's go and get the Direct Selection Tool. I'm going to hover over this particular indicator, and depending on where I move my mouse to, there are actually two indicators at this one point, and you need to be clear about which is controlling which. The left pointing arrow is controlling the right margin of the type, and the right pointing arrow is controlling the left margin. I've now got a right pointing arrow, so it's controlling this over here. I want to make sure that when I click and drag it, I just move it a little way. If I go this direction, disaster strikes. Just be aware that this is controlling this point here. Now that we've split them, they're going to behave perfectly. With either of these selected, you can just roll the text over the path by just dragging the point marker just over the line, inside the line and outside the line. Now that we've created text on a path and text on a circle let's go and actually create text on a shape, so we can see how this would all work in practice. 3. Text on a Path - Part 2: Before we finish up, let's look at a real-world situation where we might want to put text on a path. This is an award banner, similar to one that we created in one of my other classes. If you have this award banner, feel free to use your own. If you don't have it, I'm going to give you a link in the class project area where you can download this image to use yourself. Now I'm going to put everything at the top here because I want to make sure my text is above everything else. I'm just going to click to add a new layer here. We want to create a path around which we can type our text. I'm going to the Ellipse tool, and I want to make sure that I have Path selected up here. In earlier versions of Photoshop, you'll have three icons and you want the Path icon. I'm going to hold the Shift key as I start to drag out a circle, and it needs to be just a little bit larger than the inside circle here. To make it easier, I pull this, I'm using the space bar to move the shape as I draw it. You just hold the space bar down and then you can move your shape and then let go the space bar and you can continue to draw your shape. Through all of this, of course I'm keeping my finger on the shift key because I want this to be a perfect circle. Now, it's not centered, but I'm not worried about that right now, I just want the right size circle. I'm just going to let go the left mouse button, and then let go the shift key. Now I'm going to the Path Selection Tool here, I'm going to drag the shape so it's centered in the document, the award banner itself is right in the center of the document. That makes it easy to position the path exactly where you want it to be. Now for my text, I want some text along the top here, but I also want some text along the bottom. I'm going to have to break this path into two pieces to make it easy to do just that. I'm going to the Pen Tool here and what I want is the Add Anchor Point Tool, so I'm just going to click on that. I'm going to click to Add an anchor point just above this ribbon, and then click to Add another one just below the ribbon. I'm going to do the same on this side, one above the ribbon and one just below the ribbon. Now I'm going to the Direct Selection Tool, and I can now select over just this line that is over the top of the ribbon and press Delete. That breaks the line in two at that point. I'm going to do the same thing over here, Delete. If we have a look in they path pallet, you'll see that your work path is two distinct lines, one at the top and one at the bottom. Because we've got two lines, we can have texts going in both directions. Now we're going to get the Text Tool, I have white text selected here, I'm going to hover over the path and wait until I say the I-beam pointer with a wiggly line through it and then I'll click once. I've got centered text, select this, so I'm just going to type my text. Now as happened previously, the markers here are so close together that I haven't got room for my text. I'm going to my Direct Selection Tool here, I'm just going to find the adjustment point for this marker, there it is there. It's a I-beam with a left pointing arrow, so I'm just going to click and drag. But worried that my text is flipped over the line, but I'm just going to take the finishing point to right down to the very end of the line. Then I'm going to drag outwards towards the edge of this shape and that will just flip the text around. Let's go back to the Text Tool, I'm going to position it just over the end of my text, I'm going to select my text because I want to use something a little bit smaller. I'm just going to wind this down to about 36 points. Now it doesn't look particularly well centered to me here, so I'm just going to come into this marker and just move it around a little bit so that the two markers on the left and the right are pretty much equal. If you're not sure that they're equal, if you've got your rulers visible by choosing View and then Rulers, you can just drag a ruler down and just double-check. When you're done, you can choose View, Clear Guides, and the guide will just disappear. Now that we've done our first piece of text, we're ready to do the second piece of text. If you've lost your path, you can just click on the Work Path here in the path palette to pick it back up again. Let's go to the Text Tool, let's click on the line here and then we're going to type 2016. Again, I want to center this on the line, so I'm going to the Direct Selection Tool, I'm looking to pick up the marker, I'm just going to drag it around until it's approximately opposite the marker at the other end and because the text is centered, it's appearing in a perfect position except that it's upside down. Well, I'm going to grab the middle point here and just drag it so it's over the top of the line. The text is now right-side up, but it should be down here and not over the line. Well, I'm going back to the Text Tool, and I'm going to select either my text. Now I'm going back up here to the tool Options bar and I'm going to open up the Character panel because the character panel will allow me to push my text down. To do that, I'm going to adjust this setting here, which is the baseline offset. This is a scrubby slide, so I can just click and drag on the words and if I drag in a negative direction, I'm going to pull the text down as it comes. I'm just going to click Away to say if that's in a good position, which it is. Now I can just select another tool to deselect everything. We've got text on the top part of the circle, we've got text on the bottom part of the circle, we've seen how to cut a path in two, and we're ready to go ahead now and just to create some texts along this banner. 4. Text on a Path - Part 3: To put the text on this ribbon we're going back to the Paths palette because we have a ribbon path that was created and saved with the document. The path is not in the right place but it's there so that's half the work done. We're going to the Path Selection Tool. I'm just going to drag it down into position because I want to position it right over the ribbon and just where I want the text to be. Now I'm going back to my Path Selection Tool because I want to select on my path. I need to make sure that my path is selected. I'm going to click on the Text Tool and hover over the line until I get my I-beam pointer with my wiggly line through it. I'm going to click once and start typing. Now immediately I can say that the baseline shift that I had in place earlier is still being applied to this line. I'm just going to arrow back over my text and I'm going to set this to 0. That will bring the text backup onto the line. Back to my Text Tool, click on the line and continue to type. Now again my text has disappeared because the borders for my text are so close together. This time I went ahead and typed everything. I'm going now to the Direct Selection Tool. I'm going to hover over this point looking for the I-beam pointer with the left pointing arrow because that controls the right edge of my text. I'm just going to start dragging it and as I do my text should appear again and I can flip it over the line by just dragging up towards the top of the document. I'm going to start position of my text over here going back to this end of the line, looking for the right pointing I-beam cursor so that this is controlling the left edge of the text. I'm just going to drag it in a little bit. I've lost my text over the line so I'm just going to find a pointer and drag in an upwards direction and then click away. If you've been in my class where we created this aboard badge and ribbon you'll now see how handy it is to have saved the path that is along the line of this ribbon so that we would have it handy in the Paths palette and we could use it at anytime that we wanted to. Your project for this class is going to be to create text on a path. You're welcome to download this image and use it or you can use any image of your choice. Post your project in the class project area. I hope that you've enjoyed this class and that you've learned how to create text on a path and also text on a circle in Photoshop. If you did enjoy this course and if you see a prompt to recommend it to others, please give it a thumbs up. This helps others to identify this as a class that they may want to take. If you'd like to leave a comment please do so. I read and respond to all of your comments and I look at and respond to all of your class projects. My name's Helen Bradley. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of Graphic Design for Lunch. I look forward to seeing you in an upcoming episode soon.