I certainly don't want to encourage you to torture type, but I do want to explain the cool techniques used here. Other fonts are fine for the following exercises. You'll no doubt recognize (from left to right) American Typewriter, Capitals, and Arial Black. Figure 10.13 shows the before version, and Figure 10.14 demonstrates what can happen when good people use too many effects. Some of those options will be inflicted upon the letter "B" for a change. When text is rasterized you can paint on it, fill it with a gradient, pattern or texture, push it, pull it, and stomp on it. A drop shadow exists on its own layer and can be manipulated separately, independent of its more solid counterpart. You might have noticed that the External Shadow available for text behaves differently from the Drop Shadow you can add to an image layer. Refer to the settings in Figure 10.11 for the bevel effect in Figure 10.12. Your settings may vary, depending on the font you're using. The settings I used are shown in Figure 10.9 for the effect in Figure 10.10. Follow along using a similar typeface, such as Arial Black, Charcoal, or Futura.Ĭhoose Burn from the Dynamic Plugins at the bottom of your Layers Palette. I chose a rather hefty sans serif typeface, knowing that some destruction would still leave enough of it intact. Figure 10.8 has the freshly typed letter in a font called Gadget. Game designers might see some possibilities here. This time we'll use Burn and Bevel to transform an ordinary letter into an eroded sculptural piece, evoking an ancient mysterious realm. Similar effects can be applied to letterforms once they are rasterized. We made a chunky chocolate bar in Lesson 7 using two Dynamic Plugin layers in tandem: Tear and Bevel. If you agree, your text is converted to ordinary pixels. When you attempt to apply brush strokes or use any commands outside the Text Palette, Painter will ask if you want to commit the text to an image layer. You can keep going back to change the font and any other text attributes as long as you keep the text in this editable state. Text occupies its own special layer, clearly marked with the T icon, as shown in Figure 10.7.
If you're a skilled manipulator of vector-type anchor points and direction lines, you might be okay. There are only three styles, and the curves must be edited with the Shape Selector tool. If you're familiar with Photoshop's nifty Warp Text feature, prepare to be disappointed by Painter's version of text on a curve. There doesn't seem to be a way to kern (fine-tune spacing between two letters). Here's where you'll adjust tracking (letter spacing) and leading (line spacing) and assign a curve style. The Text Palette, shown in Figure 10.6, gives you most of the Property Bar choices and more. Text in Difference method, shadow using Colorize. Text uses Reverse-Out, shadow is green and blurred.