Curved Text

You can use this tutorial with any version of PSP. Pictures shown are from PSP 9.

1. Open a picture. For this tutorial, create a 250x250 space, then color the background as you desire.

2. Add a new layer. (Layers - New Rasta Layer)

3. Click on Preset Shapes tool, drop that menu down, and choose "Ellipse".

4. Leaving the defaults, draw an ellipse on the blank page. It does NOT matter if it is color filled or not. We're going to delete it later anyhow.

This circle will determine the shape of your text, so take your time creating it. Making it longer and wider makes longer, wider text. Making it a big round circle will make very round text. You'll see what I mean in the next step.

5. Click your text tool and move your cursor over the edge of your ellipse. You'll see a tilted "a" graphic appear when you're in the right place. Click that.

6. Write your text. You'll instantly see where your text is going to go. If it's overlapping down under, cancel and click again more toward the left side of the ellipse or resize your font. You can always redraw the ellipse too, if you don't like what you see.

*NOTE* If your text is coming out flat, you didn't click at the right moment. You must see that angled "a" shown in the picture above and click then. Just keep trying, it's there! Don't give up!

7. Now we're going to remove the ellipse. On your layers menu you'll see a "vector" layer. Open that up by clicking the + sign. This will now show you your text layer, as well as your ellipse layer. 

Click your text layer and then right click on it. From that big menu that appears, choose "convert text to curves" and then "as single shape" and click.

Click your ellipse layer so it's the active (highlighted) layer, and delete that layer using the delete key! If you choose "layer, delete" it will NOT work. It will delete everything, and we only want to remove the ellipse.

8. You should now have curved text. You can now delete the extra "raster 2" layer (which is blank), and cut your graphic to size. You can add 3D effects like beveling, drop shadows, or cutouts to your text. Anything you normally do to your text, you can do either with the curve technique, or after you've curved it. Have fun!