Text: Bottom Inside Ellipse?

[Linda Lou]

I have been trying to place a string of text inside the bottom of a curve. This used to be easy with node edits in PSP 7 and 8.
After almost 2 hours I can't get 2018 to cooperate. The Help page tells me to:
Use Pick Tool> Select text>Objects> Convert Text to Curves > As Single Shape

I can go as far as Objects >Convert Text to Curves. The options in the menu on the right with Single Shape are greyed out.
I must be missing something in the sequence of steps, but I can't figure out what. Maybe I'm not selecting the text at the correct step? If not, when?

All I want to do is add a sentence to the bottom inside a vector ellipse. I am determined to do it in 2018 and not go back to an earlier version, but how? (You need a smiley for tearing one's hair out.)

[Linda Lou]

I ended up going back to PSP 8 because that is the only way I know how to do this, but 8 won't open the file that I saved as a .pspimage with 2018. I haven't tried 7 yet, but if 8 won't work I doubt 7 will. Is there no way to add text along the bottom of an ellipse in 2018?

[LeviFiction]

1) PSPImage files are not completely backwards compatible. To save a file that can be opened in previous versions of PSP go to File -> Save As. Select the PSPImage format, then click on the "Options" button in the bottom right-hand corner. Select the minimum version of PSP you want to be compatible with.

2) Yes it can. And as far as I know it's very similar to PSP8. There is just a single extra step at the beginning.

In PSP8 you didn't have a separate ellipse shape tool. You had a preset shape tool with an elliptical preset shape. These shapes were paths. But ellipse shapes are not regular paths, they are specifically defined shapes with their own settings. So the first thing you have to do is convert the ellipse into a path.

First select the ellipse
Then go to Objects -> Convert to Path
Next Reverse the path by going to Objects -> Edit -> Reverse Path
Now grab your text tool and hover over the edge of the ellipse. The cursor should look like a T on a curve. If it looks like [T] with the brackets that is going to enable text wrapping which is not what you want.
With the cursor showing text on the curve, click to add text (SHifT + Click if you prefer to use the textbox)

The text should appear inside the ellipse.

[Linda Lou]

Ah, there's an options button for PSP 8! I'm usually so busy saving "As" that I never noticed it. Thank you.

As to the ellipse, I'm still having the same problem that I did when I tried to follow the Help instructions. I'm sure the two of you are correct. There's some simple step that I must not be doing correctly.
I get only so far, but the options are greyed out.

[LeviFiction]

Make sure you have the pen tool active and the ellipse selected when you go to reverse the path.

[Linda Lou]

That was it! The Pen Tool has to come into the mix. So the instructions are:
1. Draw ellipse using Ellipse Tool.
2. Select it using Magic Wand.
3. Click Pen Tool.
4. Go to Objects >Convert Path
5. Reverse path by going to Objects >Edit >Reverse Path
6. Use Text Tool to add text.

Corel's Help page did not make that clear. Either it assumes that the curve was already drawn with the Pen Tool -- or I used the wrong search terms. I think I have it now. Thank you!

=================================

Editing here:
Ran into one problem.
I have the text inside the ellipse. If I try to delete the vector ellipse (to leave only curved text) the text as well as ellipse are gone. I tried adding an extra vector layer, but apparently I needed to add the text on the same layer as the selected ellipse for the text to know where to go. How do I create the text on the path so it has its own layer -- and I can delete the only the ellipse?
I used to be able to do this (almost with my eyes closed!) hundreds of times in PSP 8. 2018 is supposed to be easier??

[ehume]

Wow. That's complicated. I do not think I would have figured out "reverse path." What does that mean anyway? Q - do you have to make the ellipse thick?

[Linda Lou]

I do not think I would have figured out "reverse path." What does that mean anyway? Q - do you have to make the ellipse thick?

It means that you are not placing text at the top of the ellipse, but at the bottom. To answer you other question, for my project I made the ellipse line width only wide enough so I could select it and see what I had selected. Seems to me it was set at about 8 for my 600x600 image.

Wow. That's complicated.

Ha! Complicated? Well, there's more: We're all in different time zones, so when I didn't get a reply here and had to finish the project, I took the long way around. When I couldn't delete or hide the ellipse on my main image I ended up creating a new transparent image, adding the ellipse, adding text, and saving it as a transparent image. Following that I c/p it as a new layer on my main project. Of course it did not fit the main image exactly so I had to adjust that to fit. Following that I carefully took literally hours erasing the ellipse around the text. If there is an easier way, let me know. If not, that's ok. Maybe I need to find a new hobby.

[ehume]

or go back to PSP 8.

[hartpaul]

Try this:

1. New transparent document 600 x 600 pixels

2. Ellipse tool Foreground color - black, Fill color transparent, Width (Line width) 8 pixels. Draw ellipse

3. Objects > Convert to Path.

4. Choose Pen Tool Objects > Edit > Reverse Path

5. Choose Text tool, choose fill color, stroke color , and stroke width.
Bring cursor up from under bottom of ellipse til it changes to a tilted T with a curve underneath then click and the cursor position should appear on inside of ellipse . Type in text and should go from left to right following the curve path.

6. Select your text (Control A or drag cursor over that text) and top right on the same bar as you chose your stroke width you will see three horizontal lines - More Options - here you can change your offset value to move the text away from the ellipse line by choosing say 10 pixels.
( By usinglarger positive or negative values you can have that text placed on different sides of the ellipse line) .
Apply your text. It should be surrounded by a bounding box and you can move the text along your ellipse to position it where you want, so long as you have a 4 headed arrow.

7. Over on your Layers palette you will see your vector layer above a raster layer and beside the Vector layer a white arrow. Click that arrow and you will get two extra layers one with text and the other with the ellipse. You can turn the visibility of the ellipse layer off and you will have the text alone. Note if you try and delete that ellipse layer your text will revert to straight text.

[LeviFiction]

@ehume - A vector path is a series of line segments that move from one node to the next. Which node comes next in the sequence is the direction of the vector path. Reversing the path means changing the direction the lines moves between nodes and which node comes next in the list. If you've ever played with vectors and the control handles one of the handles is always an arrow which indicates the direction of the path.

When text is attached to a curve it follows the direction of the path and appears on a specific side if the path is moving clockwise or counterclockwise. So, when attaching text to a path, like say an ellipse, the direction of that path directly effects how the text appears on that path. Inside or outside of the circle. If the path is moving in a clockwise direction then the text will appear on the top of the line, if the path is moving in a counter-clockwise direction then it'll appear on the bottom of the line. Or, in the case of an ellipse, on the inside of the ellipse.

[ehume]

@hartpaul - your directions worked. @LeviFiction - thank you for the explanation. I can now do all sorts of things.

One thing I learned when I followed hartpaul's instructions: increasing the offset increases the space between the ellipse and the text. I wonder what will happen when I use negative offsets?

Edit: Of course I experimented. If you do not reverse the path, the text goes clockwise around the outside of the ellipse. Negative offset has the text inside the ellipse. If you do reverse the path, the text goes counter-clockwise around the inside of the ellipse. Negative offset has the text outside the circumference.

[Linda Lou]

@ehume I cannot go back to PSP 8 from start to end with one image because it keeps crashing on Windows 10. I have to save after every step.

Thank you for the additional instructions. I won't have time to try them for a few days, but after I do I'll let you know if I was successful.

[ehume]

Experimenting again. Changing the offset sequentially changes the in-out nature of the text. Good adjustment to have.

When I copied the curved text and pasted it to a new image, the text was straight. OK. It follows the curve in vector space.

So I looked for 'convert to raster' -- I thought I had seen such. Can't find it, and Help does not help. So here are my questions:

Any way to display the curved text without showing the ellipse?
Any way to copy and pate curved text without the ellipse?
Any way to convert a vector object or layer to its raster equivalent?

My next experiment will involve trying to make a transparent ellipse so as not to show it while displaying the text.

Edit: Results of experiments.

I managed to run a bit of text along an ellipse. The ellipse was transparent but I could not do without a Fill. Both would not be transparent. I was expecting dotted lines outlining where the invisible ellipse was, but it was not to be.

So I still could not find a convert to raster function, so I saved the image to a jpg. The .jpg does not support transparencies, so the background was white.

Here I used a kludge. I could not use the Color Changer tool but I could use the Color Replacer tool, so I replaced the internal color with white. That left a colored rim, so I used the Paintbrush tool to blot out the colored rim. You can also use the Paintbrush tool to blot out the colored innards if you like. I tried that, too, and that works.

Key, I think, was saving the image as a .jpg. This collapsed everything to raster. Next I will try a .png when I have time.

[LeviFiction]

1) Yes, hide the ellipse object in the layers palette by clicking on the eyeball, or by setting the stroke width to 0 and turning off the fill.

2) Yes, but you have to convert the text to a path, so it'll no longer be editable as text. This is because text only warps around a curve when it's attached to a curve. The best way to handle copying text on a curve to another image is to just copy the entire vector layer instead of an individual vector object. Or at least copy both the text and the ellipse together.

3) The option to convert to a raster is a layer option. So it can be found under Layers -> Convert To Raster or by right-clicking on the vector layer. But this will convert the whole layer, not just an individual object. So if you only want to convert a single object to a raster you'll have to get it into its own layer.