Text turned and filled leaves white spots.

[MrLarkins]

I need some help with something. I am creating an image, mostly text and color. I want to create words with letters that have been turned cw and ccw, alternating. After that, I plan to flood fill the words. Unfortunately, I get some white inside where I flood filled. Anyone have an idea how to avoid this?

[LeviFiction]

Just create the text as a vector and leave it that way. Use a gradient as the fill color. And if needed you can convert them to a raster later.

There are other methods but that would be my suggestion.

[MrLarkins]

Hmm, well I believe I have created the text as a vector.

[LeviFiction]

Sorry, I misinterpreted your picture. I thought you had converted to Raster and were trying to manually fill the text. Which is why it seemed so odd. xD

However I don't see that when I do it. What can you tell me about your setup? Type of font family, size, style, anti-alias, stroke width? Image depth (8-bit, 16-bit, etc.)?

Also, have you tried converting to Raster and rotating that way? I know you can't do that too often without damaging the look of the text, but so long as you don't rotate it more than a few times you should be okay.

[MrLarkins]

ok, i'm using PSP x4

new image, 1000x400 px, 2500 px/in, RGB-16bits/channel

text tool, Font-Gill Sans Ultra Bold, 72px, AA-smooth, create as - vector

layers -> merge -> merge all

magic wand to select interior of letters

flood fill with gradient.

I'm creating banners, and I'm using CAPITAL letters, that are slightly rotated cw, ccw alternatively. Then I'm selecting all letters interiors in the word, and flood filling them with a gradient.

[LeviFiction]

Well....then that goes back into what I originally said. Don't use the flood fill tool to create the gradients.

Vector text can already have a gradient fill, there is no need for you to fill it manually after you rasterize it.

vectorletter.png (5.28 KiB) Viewed 6090 times

materialspalette.png (8.52 KiB) Viewed 6090 times

This shows my materials palette and the resulting letter. A you can see I have a gradient set as my background/fill property on my materials palette. Now I can rotate the letter any way that I want and no distortion of the gradient or letter occurs.

When you "Merge All" it turns the vectors into a raster image. This raster image has anti-aliasing on it which means varying shades of transparency to give it a smoother look. When rotated these get slightly jagged as there is a distortion on the pixels. Meaning that not all of the white in the letter is completely white. The magic wand doesn't pick up on this.

The best way to handle this is to work with vectors until the very last. (Don't merge down needlessly) This way you can continuously edit, resize, rotate, and do whatever you want without hurting anything. When you save out to a JPG or PNG the vector will be merged down on its own. No need for you to do it manually.

[MrLarkins]

I see what your suggesting, and I may have to use that as a fall back. But here's the difference (as I see it): My way fills the gradient over the entire word, your way fills the gradient per letter. The look it different. Remember, I am rotating letters different directions and amounts, so I can't just type the whole word and fill with a gradient and THEN rotate the individual letters (or can I?).

**EDIT**
I've been playing around with your suggestion and did some research...seems you CAN convert the entire word into individual letters by the following:

Objects -> Convert Text To Curves -> as Character Shapes

However, Mine is greyed out and I can't access it. Any ideas why?

[LeviFiction]

EDIT: Haha, I finished this reply after you edited yours. XD

The only reason I can see for it being grayed out is if you're currently editing the text. Or the text object isn't selected. If you're editing the text, finish your edits then grab the text object with the pick tool. See if that changes anything.

------Original Post---------
You mean like

Yes you can, in one of two ways.

1) You can do what you've been doing, but start with the gradient. Don't add the gradient after the fact. You can separate Each letter onto its own layer

or

2) Go to the Objects menu and select "Convert Text to Curves " -> "As Character Shapes"

This will create individual paths based on each letter that you can adjust individually. They remain vectors, but are no longer vector text.

[MrLarkins]

Hehe, seems we're both typing at the same time. These images I posted here aren't mine, but they show the differece in the gradient. The first is what I'm going for, the second is what you get. But I think I am able to increase the Kerning, that way if my word is created on a transparent background, I can use the rectangular select tool to copy each letter and then past each as a vector layer in a new image. I'll try it and yours, and see which is easiest / best result.

welcome1.gif (4.6 KiB) Viewed 6082 times

welcome2.gif (4.64 KiB) Viewed 6082 times

[MrLarkins]

ok, here is using 2 images and cut/pasteing each letter

I see what your saying about convert text to curves as character shapes, but for some reason I did that and it changed the gradient to individual letters (welcome2) and didn't seperate the letters seperate vectors.

[LeviFiction]

That's because of how gradients work inside of vectors. The gradient will always seek to fill the vector object. Once separated into individual shapes each shape is its own object and therefore the gradient doesn't move across them. When the gradient is up and down instead of moving to the side, this isn't an issue. But the way you're doing it, yeah I finally see what you're getting at.

But glad you have a working method.

There is another option, that does allow you to keep the vectors and keep the gradient as well. But it's a little odd.

Image1.png (7.73 KiB) Viewed 6071 times

Instead of "As Character SHapes" choose "As Single Shape"

Then grab the vector pen tool. With the text selected you can see the path outlines that make up each individual letter. Double click on a single node in the letter you want to rotate (letters like "o" and "e" will usually have multiple contours to select, you can select multiple contours by holding the Shift key). You can then rotate each individual letter in the text and the gradient will still spread across the whole object.

But as you can imagine that's a bit awkward sometimes.

[MrLarkins]

yes, I see it now! Not sure which is easier though, selecting the nodes to rotate, or using cut/paste to new image. I guess there about the same. Whew! I've learned so much today, my head is going to explode!

thanks a bunch for the assistance!

[photodrawken]

In PSPX5, there's the "Convert to Path" option -- you first create the text as a vector (with a gradient fill). Then, after converting the text to a path, you use the Pen tool to block select the nodes of an individual "letter". The bounding box will have a rotation handle you can use to rotate as needed.

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

Since the entire line of "text" remains as one path, you can quickly change its overall appearance:

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

[photodrawken]

I did some experimenting with this, specifically the tricky situation where the letters overlap:

Uploaded with ImageShack.us
For anyone interested in creating this effect, the bottom line is that the shapes cannot be kept as vectors in PSP because PSP lacks the advanced path editing functions that are available in vector editing programs like CorelDraw and Adobe Illustrator. Specifically, one needs to
1. Convert the text to paths.
2. Move and rotate the shapes.
3. Use the "Trim" path manipulation to eliminate the overlapping areas.
4. Combine (or create a compound path from) the paths.

(As you might expect, it's much easier to do in CorelDraw.)

Here's the result from CorelDraw:

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

And the result from Illustrator:

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

[LeviFiction]

Yes, that's why I keep asking for some of the more basic options. I don't want PSP to be an advanced vector editor, just more advanced than it is. XD

EDIT: Erased original response. Once again I replied without understanding exactly what you were talking about. Never mind.

We know they could add a TRIM option, probably easily, since Text auto-trims. But...yeah, with PSP you'd have to manually edit each path in order to fix the overlap.