Custom Textured Text

Creating custom textures and applying them to objects is very easy with Paint Shop Pro 7. This tutorial will cover creating the text above which includes creating the texture seamless tile that is applied to the text as well as covering getting rid of those white jaggies that almost always seem to crop up when we get to adding drop shadows to manually selected objects.

The first thing to do is create a new image File>New and set it's size to 200 X 200 pixels.

Next I set up my colors. The light color is #CB5F35 and the dark color is #822500 which you can set by clicking on the styles colored tiles. Your color palette should look similar to below.

I know the colors look pretty ugly right now but you'll see what happens to them later.

 

Flood fill your new image and then using the shapes tool draw a rectangle.

Go to Effects>Textures>Fur and using the settings shown below apply the effect to your image.

 

Your image should now look similar to the below image. Doesn't look like much does it?

We now need to convert the above image to a seamless tile.

Make a rectangular selection similar to the one below.

Go to Selections>Create Seamless Pattern.

 

A new image will open with your seamless tile on it similar to below. Now the hard part is done and it wasn't even very hard at all.

 

Open a new image. I set my image size at 590 X 100 pixels for the text I need to fit on it.

Select the text tool and click anywhere on this new blank image.

In the Styles options remove any Stroke color or pattern if there is one and set the fill to pattern. Click on the Fill pattern and at the top of the drop down for the pattern fill dialog you should see your newly created tiled image. Select it and then select ok.

You should now see you tile in the Styles Fill box.

Make sure your text is set to vector and anti-alias. Click ok to place you text on the canvas.

 

I now have text that is not as tall as I want it. Since I have created it as a vector all I have to do is drag the handles up to make it taller.

 

Now I have my text the way I want it.

Next go to Layer>Convert to Rastor.

 

Using the Magic Wand selection tool click anywhere on the canvas where there is not text. You will see the selection marquee around the outside of the letters and the outside edges of your image. If you have text like mine the little bit of white in the letters "e" and "a" are not selected. To select them hold down the shift key and use the magic wand tool to select them without deselecting what we have already done.

Go to Selections>Invert

Your text should be all that is selected now.

Go to Effects>3D Effects>Outer Bevel

You can adjust the settings however you want. The screenshot below reflects the settings I used for this tutorial.

Once you have your settings the way you want click ok.

 

I now have the text below which is perfectly fine for a finished product, however, I like drop shadows so I'll add one here after taking a few steps to make sure it will all come out ok.

Take a look at the image below. You should be able to see white jaggies. This is from adding a drop shadow to text that is manually selected. 

To remove the jaggies, before you apply the drop shadow go to Selections>Float. 

Sometimes simply floating the text is enough to stop the jaggies from showing up. I do the next step automatically just because I don't want to deal with undoing something if the jaggies aren't removed simply by floating my selection.

Go to Selections>Matting>Remove White Matt

 

Now go to Effects>3D Effects>Drop Shadow and apply your drop shadow.

You should have nice clean text without jaggies as shown below.

Go to Selections>Select None

Go to Layers>Merge All

Now save your image and it's ready to use.

 

Copyright Vikki Olds, All Rights Reserved