Making Curved Text

This tutorial is here at the request of a very good friend of mine.  Thank you Heidi!! 

It took me forever to get the hang of how to do this the first few times I tried, so don't give up if you can't get the hang of it the first time... keep on trying and eventually something will "click" and it'll work!  :o)

There are lots of tutorials out there that tell you how to do this but I could never follow them 'cos there either wasn't enough detail or enough screenshots, so when Heidi asked me to teach her how to do it, I decided I was going to put as many screenshots and as much detail into this one as I could.  I remember only too well how frustrating it was when I followed tutorial after tutorial after tutorial and I just couldn't get it to go right so hopefully by putting lots of screenshots and detail in here it will be easier to follow :o)

You will need:

A copy of PaintShop Pro - you can download a 30 day trial version from here

A copy of Winzip - you can download it from here

This zip file (the tube should be compatible with PSP versions 5, 6 and 7).  Unzip it to somewhere on your hard drive

Fire up PSP and wait for it to load

Open up your unzipped tube ("File" then "Open" or and then navigate to where you unzipped your tube to and hit "Open")

Start a new image at the following settings:

Width: 300 pixels
Height: 300 pixels
Resolution: 72.000 pixels per inch
Transparent background
16.7 million colours (24 bit)

Go back to your tube ("Windows" menu and then choose the name of your tube in the list)

Take a copy of your tube ("Edit" then "Copy" or Ctrl and C)

 Then go back to your blank image ("Window" menu then choose the name of your image)

Paste your tube as a new layer ("Edit" then "Paste" and across to "As New Layer" or Ctrl and L)

Now would be a good time to save your image as a .psp file so that if something *does* go wrong, you can get back to this point and follow the steps again until you are happy with what you have done on your image.  It's important to save it as a .psp file so that the you can come back to exactly this place - a .gif or .jpg wouldn't let you do that - it would add a background to your image and we don't want that yet.

Now we need to use our Preset Shapes tool

Make sure you have your Tool Options Window on the workspace - if you don't, right click on a blank bit of space next to your toolbars and choose the option that says "Tool Options".  You should now have a titlebar on your workspace that says "Tool Options".  If it's getting in your way, just click and drag on the title bar and move it to somewhere else.

Make both your foreground and background colour white 

Go up to your Tool Options Window and use the following settings:

Shape:  Elipse
Retain Style:  NOT checked
Antialias:  Checked
Create as vector:  Checked
Line width:  1
Line style:  straight line