How to achieve this?

[terrypin]

How would I achieve the following in the easiest way please?

I'm making a birthday card. A white image about 1200 x 1700 px with a large number '7' almost filling it. The text has a black outline, but I want it filled with several photos, overlapping so that no black shows apart from the outline.

Ideally I'd like to have the large number 7 as an 'outline' font, i.e. empty inside but with a solid border. So that I could in effect drag the photos around to get exactly the result I want, but with nothing outside the borders of the 7.

I have managed to do it by clumsy methods, and am at the stage shown here:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4019461/CardInsert-2.jpg

So as a side question is: how would I add a solid coloured border to that?

I'm using PSP 8, but I imagine techniques from later versions might work too?

-- Terry, East Grinstead, UK

[LeviFiction]

Well, fortunately for me I still have my PSP 8 trial installed and yes the same method I would use in all of the later versions will work in PSP 8.

First make a vector text with the 7. Make sure "Create As" is set to Vector because you want to keep it as a vector. Also make sure the Foreground and background colors (Stroke & Fill) are set. Don't turn off either of the materials.

With the vector positioned and sized properly go to the selections menu and select "From Vector Object" this will create a selection in the form of the vector.

Now go ahead and edit the vector text again, turn off the fill color (Background) and it will just leave the stroke behind. If you don't have a stroke make sure to increase the stroke size so it's visible.

Now I prefer to make a mask from the selection. Make sure the raster layer is selected in the layers palette. From the Layers menu select Create Mask Show selection.

This will mask out anything below the mask layer that is outside the number 7. The vector will act as the outline and you can position the images underneath the mask and they won't show up outside of the 7.

It's non-destructive and very flexible. If you decide to change the font, or size or position all you have to do is make a new selection based on the vector (again you need to turn Fill back on or else it'll only select the outline) then use the selection to edit the Mask layer with the new setup and reposition the images underneath.

Of course you can do any number of combinations.

With the current image you just select all of the white areas (with the magic wand tool) then go into Selections -> Modify -> Select Selection borders

And it'll select the edges of the current selection and you can then paint it in with the stroke color.

[terrypin]

Many thanks - I'll try that in the morning!

Saturday 22 October 2011, 22:22, UK time.

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK

[terrypin]

I think I correctly followed the steps you described, but it looks like something isn't right. This shows the position after I've copied an image to the clipboard and then used Ctrl+L to Paste as New Layer and started positioning it. I'd expected it to display only the part inside the '7'.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4019461/CardInsert-New-1.jpg

Any thoughts on where I may have gone wrong please?

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK

[LeviFiction]

You have to place any and all image layers underneath the mask layer. If you look at your layers palette there the new image is above the mask layer.

I would upload a video as an example but it looks like you've got it.

[terrypin]

Thanks, you're a star!

I think there's possibly something odd in PSP 8 concerning positioning layers. I had in fact tried several times to shift 'Raster 2' below 'Raster 1', as that seemed the intuitive thing to do. But nothing happened. So I'd concluded that the operation was invalid for some reason. But prompted by your latest post I persisted. I think it's connected with the fact that I had the Deform tool selected (which I'd used for sizing and positioning the photo I was adding). No message was displayed when I tried the layer move. But then when I instead tried reversing the move, i.e. dragging 'Mask - Raster 1' above 'Raster 2', I got a message about the Deform tool having to be reset. When I OK'd that, happily the layers were then correctly switched.

I'm going to have to study this more to properly grasp it (particularly selecting 'From Vector Object', which I've never used before) but meanwhile I'm just pleased to have a practical solution I can at least follow by rote!

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK