ESSENTIAL TRICKS
1
Sample a colour
Open ty_elements16.jpg. To make our postcard style text
complement the content of the image, grab the Eyedropper tool
from the Toolbox. Click the bright yellow paintwork of the beach hut to
sample it. The Foreground colour swatch in the Toolbox will turn
yellow. Click the Horizontal Type tool (in the compartment below the
Eyedropper). Press Cmd/Ctrl++ a couple of times to zoom into the
image to get a closer look.3
Type some text
Click the sky above the beach hut to place the cursor and type
‘WISH YOU WERE’. Then hit Enter to start typing on a new line
and type ‘HERE!’. Thanks to the Center Text box in the Tool Options,
the lower text is aligned in the middle of the upper text line. Place the
cursor outside the text and it will turn into the Move tool. Drag the text
into position above the beach hut.2
Adjust the text options
Click the Select Font Family drop-down menu in the Tool
Options and choose a suitably cheesy seaside postcard-style
font such as Noteworthy. Set the drop-down menu below to Bold.
Type in a Size of 100 pt. Click the Center Text box. Make sure that
the Anti-Aliasing box is ticked to give your text nice, smooth edges.
You’ll notice that the text swatch features the same colour that we
sampled earlier.4
Resize the text
A text layer will appear in the Layers panel. You’ll notice a
bounding box appears around the text. Drag the corner and edge
handles of the box to make the text become larger and wider so that it
matches the width of the beach hut. Drag inside the bounding box to
reposition the text. The enlarged text looks as smooth and clean as the
original. Click the tick to apply the change.