In todays Sunday School we are going to be learning how to use custom shapes as text frames in photoshop. Who says that journaling has to be written in neat little boxes? Today I will teach you how to get creative and add text shapes as an additional design element to your pages. There's even another little freebie at the end for you all!
How to Create shaped text
Note: I have created a document 3600x3600 to work on for this tutorial but you can just as easily do all these steps directly onto your layout. There is no need to create a new document just for creating your text paths.
1. Select the custom shape tool.
2. Once you have selected Custom Shape Tool go to the drop down shape menu in the options bar along the top of the screen and choose the shape you wish to use for your text frame. The best shapes have a wide spaces inside to write in, if they are too small and fiddly the text will be very difficult to read.
3. In the far left of the options bar is a row of three 'square' icons, these give you different options when creating shapes. In order to create a text frame we need to select the square with the pen tool in the middle. This is the 'path' option and will allow is to draw a shape which is essentially a frame and allow us to write inside it.
4. Now draw your shape on to your document. Holding down the shift key as you draw your shape will allow it to maintain its proportions and not get stretched out of shape.
5. Use Ctrl+T (pc) or Command+T (Mac) to bring up your free transform bounding box. You can now resize, rotate and move your text frame shape as you would any other shape. So play with it on your layout until you are ahppy with the position.
6. Once you are happy with the position of your text frame select the Type Tool from the Tools Menu and move the type cursor anywhere into the middle of your shape frame. You will see 2 dotted brackets appear either side of the cursor which indicates that we are about to type inside a text frame. You can now fill your shape with your journaling. Once you have finished typing remember to accept by selecting the tick (checkmark) on the far right of the options bar. Your text can now be treated the same as regular text; select the style, size, justification and colour that is right for your layout.
Now I promised you all a little freebie and here it is, 4 shaped texts for use in photoshop or photoshop elements. Enjoy adding these to your layouts.
Don't forget to let me know what else you would like to see covered in Sunday School.
Have a happy Scrappy week!
