Text Shaping in Photoshop
Photoshop CS2 has many strengths, all of which are enhanced by the remarkable versatility of the program. Not only can Photoshop CS2 fulfill all of your image editing and effects needs, it can also be used to add effects to text.
Personalized banners and striking headlines can be made by using Photoshop’s Warp Text feature. This feature enables you to wrap or bend text around and object in your image. Warping text can be done in either a horizontal or vertical direction to add distinction to your text. Photoshop has many ways in which this effect can be achieved, but we will use the following as a learning platform particularly for those who might not have used Photoshop’s text tools before.
Open an image to which you want to add text. Select the horizontal text tool from the toolbar and click the image close to where you want to place your text. Type the text you wish to add. While in Text mode, you can also apply standard style enhancements like italics, bold or underline to your text.
After you have completed your text, select and right-click the text to open the contextual menu. Open the Warp Text dialogue box by selecting Warp Text. This box will contain a list of pre-defined text warps to choose from using the Style pull-down menu. Simply select the warp that best fits the look you want to reach. Try out some of the different warp effects to see what they look like if you are not quite sure which one might work best for you.
There will be several sliders under the Style pull-down that will allow you to make fine-tuning adjustments to the warp effects. You can change the horizontal and vertical distortion and the text bend here. An option to using the sliders is to enter a percentage value for these properties. Once you have reached the effect desired, simple click OK and the Warp Text effect will be applied to your image.