Veni, Vidi, Ventus --
The randomly chaotic and crafty scribblings of a deranged, wannabe artist allowed too many colours in her Crayon box.

Surgeon General's Warning: Some content of "From Pooka's Crayon" may not be suitable for: work, blue-haired little old ladies, the politically-correct, rabid moonbats, uptight mothers, priests, chronic idiots, insurance claims agents, Democrats, children, small furry quadropeds from Alpha Centauri, or your sanity.

Sunday, July 13, 2008

Weekenders: Printing "White" Text on Your Computer

Yes, be shocked, be amazed, it's the return of Pooka's Weekenders.

Also, clearly, not dead.

Creating "White" Text on Your Printer:


Depending on how much text you want to do, there IS a way, using PSP or Photoshop, that you can KINDA do this -- you'll see what I mean.

Method One:

Set the fill color for the letter to be white. Set the outer color to be black, or another color that matches your LO -- this is going to give you a "mat" around all of your text.

Do a few test words to see how wide you need to set the outline color. You can adjust this through whatever the line width setting is for your program. What you want is for that outline to be wide enough to touch the outline of the next letter, thus basically giving you a solid line of text that you can cut out in one piece.

Now, start adding your text to your image. Remember to leave enough space between the lines to make it easy to cut each line out. Adjust to make sure that it's going to fit onto the size of the red (or whatever background color you want) as well.

Print your text. Cut along the outside of the mat color, then adhere to your background.

Not just white text, but white text with its own mat.

Method 2:

If you're having trouble finding how to set the line width, or want to try something else, there's yet another way to add the mat to make it easy to cut the journaling out.

Go ahead and create your text, making sure once again that it fits onto your CS. DO NOT deselect it, keep the text selected.

Find where your program gives the Effects option of creating a Drop Shadow.

You want to set Opacity to 100% (Option: You can play with this, and see if you like a softer look. However, this WILL give a bit of a 'halo' look that might be more difficult to cut out). Select the color you want for your mat/shadow.

Adjust the size of the shadow by increasing the number values equally until once again the letters touch each other. Accept.

Print, and cut out lines in one piece.

--------

These techniques will also help save you ink, and thus save you money. Sure, you can do white text on a fully colored background, and the white will just remain blank, however, do you REALLY want to use up that much of your ink just to make a background, when the above method uses a LOT less ink?

Paper is cheap. Ink, and the gas to go get more, are not.

Enjoy my brain-damaged idea fountain. :D