Good morning scrappers! Tamara here back with another tutorial about your Photoshop program!  Have you ever been typing in your program and wished that you could fit your text inside of a cool journal tag or a fun paper shape? Did you draw your text box and then start to write, only to find yourself having to add lots of spaces in order to fit the text in the shape correctly? Have you thrown your hands up in frustration only to decide that a square text would do? Then you are going to love the tutorial today!

I have been using Photoshop for five years now and, without fail, I learn something new about the program almost every day!  One of my most favorite, and often used, techniques that I learned is the text path!

Creating text on a path is actually a very simple process.  To begin, you must first start with a path. There are several ways that you can go about creating a path, either by using the Pen Tool  to create a freeform path, using one of the shape tools like the Rectangle or the Ellipse Tool to create a square or circular path, or by using the custom shapes tool to create a fun shaped text path!  Whatever method you use to draw your path makes no difference…it just depends on the shape that you are creating!

I  use the pen tool to create a free flowing shape or form  on my layout. For example, If I had created a wavy paper and I wanted to add text to it, I would use my pen tool. I would also use it if I  wanted to follow a shape on my layout  that is very unusual.

To create a text path using the pen, you may open a new layer in your layout, OR or you can open a new document and work with it separately.  Whichever choice you make, make sure that you have a colored background versus a transparent background because it makes it easier to see the path you are drawing.   Select the Pen Tool, from the tools palette. When the fly out menu appears, you can choose either the Pen tool, which will allow you to add anchor points to your path that are  later connected to create the text path; or you can choose the Freeform pen, which lets you use your mouse as a sort of pen and allows you to just draw your selection by hand. I am going to use the Pen Tool for my selection today..mostly because I like the control that you have with this pen a little more!

We now need to choose the Paths choice from our tool options bar at the top of the screen (under Edit). Photoshop gives three choices when working with the Shape tools. The first choice allows you to create vector shapes,the second choice allows you to create paths, and the third choice allows you to fill shapes.  Since we are going to create a text path, we need to select the second button (highlighted in blue)

 Now we need to draw our path on our new document or layout.  Using the pen tool, I click on my document to set my anchor points. Keep clicking until you finish creating your text path.  Your path can either be open (like mine below) or closed (a path that has the same starting and ending point).

Now that the path has been created we will add our text to the path. In the Tools Palette, select the Horizontal Type Tool.

Go to your newly created path and hover over the area that you want to begin typing. You should notice that the cursor turns into what is called an I-Beam.  When that I-Beam Appears, click on your path and begin typing.

If your text does not fit correctly on your path, there are a couple of things that you can do. First, check your text size;  you may only need to increase or decrease your font size for it to fit correctly.  If , however, you realize that you did not start your text box in the right place, or you want your text to face  a different way, then the Path Selection Tool, located in the  in the tools palette, is just the tool you need!  The Path Selection Tool is the tool that looks like a black arrow.

You can see here in this example, that  I accidentally started my text halfway into my layout.

Choose the Path Selection Tool in the tools palette.When you go to your text, and hover over the path, an icon will appear that looks like an I with an arrow pointing to the right.  Click and hold the mouse button down over the text on the path. Click and drag your mouse left or right to reposition the text horizontally on the path or click and drag your mouse up or down to move the text to the other side of the path.

Once you have your text positioned where you want it, you are done! See how easy it is? By using the pen tool, you can draw out any shape or form you want and quickly add text to it!

Next week, I will show you how to add text in custom shapes and how to use the Ellipse and Rectangle tools to create a text path! Hope you enjoyed the lesson this week!

Happy scrapping,

Tamara