Making Curved Text

Now we're going to add the text to your image... we've almost finished now! 

First we need to add a new layer for your text to go on, so go to "Layers" then "New Raster Layer"

Select your text tool and hover over the very edge of your white shape.  You'll notice your cursor has changed to a crosshair with an A at an angle and a downwards pointing curve underneath it.  That's cool.  It means that PSP knows you want to write your text on the edge of your white border.

With your text tool still selected, go to your Tool Options window (the one that was getting in your way at the start of the tutorial) and use the following settings:

Width:  1
Line style:  straight line

Go back to the very edge of your white shape and hover over it again.  When you see the crosshair and angled "A" again, single left click to bring up the Text Dialogue box.

Change your colour settings so that they look like this:

Styles section: 
Stroke:  Null
Fill:  Colour of your choice - I'm using black

Textures section:
Stroke:  Null
Fill:  Null

We only want to have the "fill" in the styles active 'cos using a colour in the stroke makes it really bold and yucky and we don't want textures on our text this time - it will be too small to see anything so we just want it to be a plain colour.

Now you need to choose the font you are going to use and the size you want it to be.  I'm using Monotype Corsiva at size 24 but you can use anything you would like to.

Type whatever text you want to appear around the edge of your image in the text box.

Make sure that "kerning" and "leading" are set at 0 and that "Auto kern" is unchecked

Make sure that your text is centered and not bold, underlined or in italics.  It's very important that you make sure the text is centered as this tells PSP that you want your text at the top of your image, right in the middle.

Make sure that "floating" and "antialias" are checked.

When all that's set, hit "OK" and your text will magically appear at the top of your image!!

** A little note here... some people find that when they get to this bit, their text is upside down.  If you find this when you get to this stage, just go to "Image" then down to "Flip" then back up to "Image" and down to "Mirror"... this will make your text appear the right way up, now just use your mover tool (the 4 headed arrow) to put your text where you want it and carry on with the next step!  :o)

We've nearly finished now... just got to tidy it up a bit and make it look a bit better  :o)

Save your work as a .psp file and when you're ready, let's go to the last page :o)