PaintShop Pro X4-Adding Text

[bkford]

I really am trying to follow the instructions. I just want to be able to add text to a photo. I follow the steps, choosing 12pt, but when I try to type on the photo, I can tell something is trying to show up on the photo, but it is so tiny, it is not visible. What am I doing wrong? I can't find a tutorial on it, and I'm doing exactly the steps outlined in the Help.

[LeviFiction]

What you're running into is a common misunderstanding of how Font sizes are calculated on images. Let's take a look.

How large is your image and what is the resolution?

Something to keep in mind: There are two ways to define the size of text 1) Points 2) Pixels.

Points are a measurement of physical size and are technically measured in inches, a single point is 1/72 of an inch. So 72 points = 1 inch.

Pixels refer to how many pixels tall the font is.

You can set the size type in the drop down box found next to the font-size number box.

This is important because of the dpi(ppi) settings of your image. If I have an image with a dpi(ppi) of 300 that means I'm using 300 pixels per 1 inch. This is different from say Microsoft Word that uses a set DPI(ppi) for all of its printing.

The direct translation inside of PSP is that a point size of 72 on an image with a 300(dpi) equals 300 pixels. If you have a smaller dpi(ppi) on your image you'll use fewer pixels to represent the text. So an image with a dpi(ppi) of 72 will have the point size match the pixel size.

So if your image has a 72dpi(ppi) and you set a point size of 12 then the number of pixels each character takes up is Pixels = (points/72) * dpi. 12 = (12/72) * 72. So a point size of 12 is 12 pixels high. And if your image is say 1800x1200 pixels (standard 4x6 at 300dpi(ppi)) using only 12 pixels on that will look very very small.

Do the same thing on an image with a dpi(ppi) of 300 and you'll get a pixel size of 50 per character instead of 12. Still not huge but definitely bigger than 12 pixels.

So your only problem is that you need to either set a bigger resolution DPI(ppi) or you need to set a larger font size.

[bkford]

Because I print out my photos for real scrapbooks, I keep my images at high resolution, as they come in from the digital camera. So, the resolution is very high. I did try the largest font size (72 points), and it was still too small. So, are you saying that I need to choose pixel rather than font, for my text size?

[LeviFiction]

You can set a font size in points larger than the drop down gives you so if you want to set it at 144 points you can do so. Just type it in. You can also re-size the text manually if you would prefer to eye-ball it.

Also X4 has had a bad habit of resetting resolutions to 72 so I would double check the resolution just to be sure. It's a bug that we hope will be worked out soon.

[JStanley]

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