Cutting and Filling Type

The words you paste onto a picture might be filled with meaning. They can also be filled with pictures. Here's how to do some of my favorite Photoshop tricks.

Half the battle is finding a picture to work with. The other half is finding a nice fat typeface that leaves plenty of room for your pictures to show through. In this case, I'm using a photo of a pile of maple leaves.

First, I click the Type tool and hold down the mouse button to select the Type Mask tool, which is used for making type-shaped selection marquees. I've selected a bold face called Fat Man. To make it even bolder, I'll select Faux Bold from the Character palette's pop-up menu, shown in Figure 17.15. Check out the other character options on this menu, too.

Figure 17.15. Faux Bold adds extra boldness to any character, whether already bold or not.

When I position the cursor and start to place my letters, something surprising happens. The screen goes into Quick Mask mode, and turns pink. As I enter the letters , they appear to be in a contrasting color , but when I finish typing and deselect the Type tool, they turn into a selection marquee and the temporary mask goes away. Figure 17.16 shows how this looks onscreen.

Figure 17.16. The letters are active selections.

Now I can press Command+X (Mac) or Control+X (Windows) and cut out the letters. I'll quickly open a new image file and paste them on it for safekeeping. Figure 17.17 shows the cut-out lettering and the photo it came from.

Figure 17.17. The type's cut out of the photo.

It's Automatic

If you open a new image file after having copied or cut a selection, Photoshop will automatically insert the dimensions of the selection in the New dialog box.

I'm going to use these letters as part of the title slide for a PowerPoint presentation. So, I'll drag a copy onto a fall scene photo, and then add a deep red drop shadow behind the words, and an inner glow in pale yellow to help make them stand out. Figure 17.18 shows the final logo, after all these tricks. Be sure to see it in color, too.

Figure 17.18. The letters jump right out.