Photoshop Tutorial: Make a outline font from a solid one...and fill it!

For our second installment of working with fonts, I will show you how to make an outline font and how to fill it. It is easier than filling an already empty font, as you will see. First, I found this great font. (Paper Cut Out from dafont.com) It is perfect because it is solid, thick, and so fun! Note: I did change the spacing between the letters, the tracking, with the character panel. Just to give me more options later on with the outlines.

Then I made a copy of the layer with cmd/ctrl+J and added a small stroke to the outside of the top layer.

 If you just want to make an outline font, go in and change the color of the text in this step to white and you can have this:

 If you want to clip on fun paper here,  there are a few more steps. After turning the outlined layer to white, clip patterned paper to the first (non-outlined) text layer. Then, on the outlined text layer, change the blend mode to multiply and the paper will show through!

You'll notice in this font tutorial, no rasterizing was needed. That means, if you want to change the text you can! Just be sure to change it on both text layers. ;)

Bonus: if you want to turn this one into a digi sticker, this will require just one more simple step. On the bottom text layer add a wide white stroke. Super simple!

Photoshop tutorial: filling an outline font

When I first started learning Photoshop, I tried in vain to figure out how to fill the middle of an empty font, like this one. (Agent Orange font from www.1001freefonts.com)

Determined to figure it out, I sat down today and in a few minutes I got it done. Here is how I did it! All my work is done in Photoshop CS6 on a Mac, fwiw. If all you want to do is to fill with a solid color, you can quickly do so with the paint bucket tool. Click on the color picker, choose your color, and click with the paint bucket (shortcut=G) in the white areas of the letters to fill:

But, this doesn't help if I want to use patterned papers to fill the letters. That takes a few more steps. First, you need to rasterize the font layer. I prefer to always make a copy of the layer first (cmd or ctrl J) just in case I need to go back to the beginning and start over without completely starting over...once you rasterize a text layer, you can no longer go back and edit the type. To rasterize, I click on the layer in the layers palette and choose rasterize. Now, if you turn off the eyeballs next to all the layers but the new one, you will see that the black outlines are on a transparent layer, like so:

You will need a new blank transparent layer at the end of this next step. Just click the new layer icon at the bottom of the layers panel so it is ready. Now, cmd+click (or ctrl+click) on the thumbnail of the rasterized text layer and it will put marching ants around the letters. If we filled now, it would just change the color of the currently black parts of the letter. We could have done that when typing the text to begin with, using the font panel color picker. To now select the inner parts of the letters, cmd+shift+I (ctrl+shift+I) to inverse the selection. You'll know it's inversed if the marching ants are around the whole screen. Now click on that blank layer we made and click inside the letters with the paint bucket. It will look like this:

Don't despair--it is easy to get rid of all that extra color. After hitting cmd+D (ctrl+D) to get rid of the marching ants, find the magic wand tool.  Be sure the contiguous box is checked and click anywhere outside of the letters, then hit delete. Voila!

Now, turn off the black outline layer and you will see your clipping mask:

And when you bring in some cute patterned paper and option+click (alt+click) between the layers in the layer palette and clip the paper to the mask, you can get something like this:

(Bella Gypsy Road Trip Multicolored Chevrons paper)

It is completely reusable, as long as you always want the same word. Or, if you want to make your own alpha set you could fill a page with the alphabet and follow the same steps. And then just save as a PSD or TIFF to be able to change the background at your will.

BONUS: Make it a digi sticker!

On the outline layer, add a stroke in layer effects. Make it white and a width of about 30 px and you can have this (with a blue background layer to see the stroke outline better):

Digi Layout and a tip: making a scalloped edge

This layout uses a kit from August's Digi Files: Meredith Cardall's A Bushel and a Peck. I was pretty proud of myself making the scalloped paper.  Here's how: On a new layer, I used the rectangular marquis tool to make the large rectangle and filled it with a color. Then I dragged down a guide line from the ruler to help me get a straight line of circles using a hard edged circle brush. Last, I just clipped the blue paper to the new scalloped paper. Voila!

Getting caught up....digi layouts (with tips, of course :)

I decided instead of a new post for each of my layouts I've been working on over the last month, I should just lump the rest into one post. Easy peasy.

All of the products in this layout are from last month's Digi Files from the Daily Digi. It is an amazing deal every month with a huge amount great products. The two kits I used here are 95 Days of Summer Fun from Sarah Jones and Sara Gleason's Coconut Tree. Tip: in my journaling you will quickly notice some words that stand out. Using a bright color and a larger font size it is easy to see what the important words are. And it gives some visual interest to these large blocks of text.

I was going for the look of a magazine ad: large photo and white space. I even added the photo credit as in a magazine. And don't you love that font for the title? The tip here is to find fonts that match the mood and theme of the page. There are so many free fonts out there waiting for you to find them! (The title font is called US Declaration.)

This page was one of my first. I worked hard to get a paint look behind the journaling. It didn't turn out how I wanted, but it's kinda fun to keep old pages to see how I have progressed. I worked a lot on this page to get the shadows right. When you have layered elements, like in the top corner of the photo, sometimes the shadows don't look right as elements have different layers to shadow to. The tip? Right click on the element layer in the layer palette and choose create layer. Then the shadow will jump down to it's own layer and you can manipulate it to suit the situation.

This uses a template from a Jessica Sprague challenge, which just happened to work with one of my favorite photos last summer of Grandpa's canoe. Tip: Use an inner glow around your photo to give it a bit of a chalked edge.  You can also paint on a blank layer to get more of an uneven edge to the "chalking", but for a quick fix, inner glow is the way to go.

Digi Layout and a tip: visual triangle with a twist

Little Green Frog Designs provided this template over on Scrap Orchard. The tip here is a simple one, with a twist. I have a visual triangle with the flowers on my Mom, the flowers under the Mom title, and the tab/button cluster at the bottom. The twist? I used part of a photo instead of just embellishments as part of the visual triangle!

Digi layout and a tip: cut out the title

This is for LGFD May Blog challenge using her free template and Erin Kay Studio's Today Tomorrow Always kit.  My favorite techniques on this page are using the digital brushes as frames and the tip? Using an inner shadow on the title so it looks cut out of the page. So easy and so fun!

Digi layout and a tip: tone down the brightness

I got some great new products I wanted to give a try. The template is from Rainy Dayz and everything else is from Snips and Snails. The how to tip for this page: The To Do List, background paper and floral paper were too bright for my page. The elements came from different kits, but were a close match for what I needed. So, I clipped a blank white layer to each of these elements and used a Soft Light blending layer. Voila! Toned down just enough for my needs. You can also do the same with a solid white layer on a normal blending mode and just change the opacity. After all, as with most techniques, Photoshop has so many ways to get to the same end. It just depends on you and your project!