CKG - bordered characters

Bordered characters is what I call the text you find in advertisements and on the covers of strips: the characters in a given color are outlined by another, often darker, color like in the heading above. This effect is used to give emphasis to a heading or a name or, in strips, to give power to an exclamation. This effect is achieved with very simple means: I'll show you!
	Open a new image, make the background the color you want . In the menu bar choose your text tool, the 'A' character. The foreground color or, in PSP6, the text color should contrast nicely with the background. Note that the color you choose here will be the color of the border surrounding your final text!
	Type your text. Mine is black on a darkish green background. So the color black will be the color of my outlined border. Keep the text selected!
	Go selections > Modify > Contract
	and contract by 1 for small text, by up to 4 or 5 for large text. Now the marquee (the 'marching ants') will be somewhere IN each character as you can see further down.
	Now in the menu bar pick the paintbrush tool. Brush size should be set quite large, as the only part affected by it will be the selection (no need to be careful here!). In the color swatch pick the main color you want your text to have.
	Now move your brush over the selection and paint it. As you see, the paint is applied only within the selection!
	After Selections > select none your final result will be a piece of text consisting of nicely outlined characters.
Of course if you do not deselect right away, you can still apply all kinds of effects to your text, thus making it into a nice heading or so...

In PSP6 you have the added posibility to make your text follow a curve, or a crooked line, or a circle like I did with the leading header image at the top. This is achieved by using PSP6's added ability to create vectors. I will not explain vector text here: although by the illustrations you will note that I did this exercise in PSP6, it can without any problem be done in PSP5! Once you have tried and mastered this method (and there really is nothing to it!) you can go visit numerous places where the new use of vectors for text is explained extensively. The greatest list of PSP tutorials can be found at Renald's place! If you go there, the tutorials for PSP version 6 are listed near the bottom. There you'll also find the tutorials on vector text following curves, circles etcetera.
That's all for now! But please, do come back soon: new tutorials will be added quite often!

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