The Sprague Lab

Happy New Year!

 I hope all of your festivities were awesome. We have had a great few weeks full of family and togetherness. And on Wednesday, one statement of Rowen’s had me running for my camera. I got a photo and made the layout that became today’s Photoshop Friday.

Today we’ll work on using our Horizontal Type Mask tool. This amazing little tool creates a selection from a font, rather than typing in solid letters. This enables you to create outline fonts from any font (by stroking the selection), or fill a font with any pattern under the sun. 

Here’s the layout for today:

Click for larger.

Supplies: Fancy Free and Being paper packs by Jen Wilson; Fresh Foliage brush set by Jason Gaylor; Fonts: 2peas Stopsign, Impact 

In my example, I cut the letters for my title from a patterned paper by Jen Wilson. I recommend using a paper with a very small pattern, or scaling down a paper with a larger one. Textured and distressed solids also work great for this. So the first thing we’ll need is a patterned paper to cut our letters from.

1. Open a patterned paper to cut your letters from. I used a paper called FancyFree from the Fancy Free kit by Jen Wilson (whose site isn’t up just now).

2. Create a 12x12 blank photoshop document. (File > New Blank File, 12x12 inches, 300 dpi, RGB color, white background).

3. Drag your patterned paper onto your new document. (Remember never EVER to work in an original file. Bad things might happen. Dogs and cats living together. Mass hysteria. That sort of thing.)

4.  Select your Horizontal Type Mask tool. It lives under your Horizontal Type tool, and you can get it by clicking and holding on your type tool until the little flyout menu appears. It looks like this:

5. In the  Options bar at the top of your screen, choose a big thick font and a large font size. I chose Impact, 72 pt.

6. Click anywhere on your document. Your screen will turn pink and you’ll have a cursor to type in. The pink indicates that you are actually working in a mask (yes, exactly like a layer mask) that will create a selection from whatever you type next.

 Here’s a screen shot of what it should look like while you type your title:

Click for larger 

When you are finished typing, choose your Rectangle Marquee tool. You’ll leave the Quick Mask mode (which is what the pink-screen thing is called) and return to your document, but you’ll have a selection of the words in your title. Awesome! If you’re this far, you’re almost done. :)

7. With the Rectangle Marquee tool selected, you can reposition your selection anywhere on your paper to cut out exactly what you want.

8. With your patterned paper layer targeted, go to Select > Inverse. This selects everything except your original selection. Hit Delete to erase the patterned paper around  your selection. 

9. If you would like to outline your letters, go to Select > Inverse again, then go to Edit > Stroke (Outline) selection. Choose 10 pixels and a dark color (or white, depending on what your letters will be sitting on). If you don’t want to outline your letters, simply hit Ctrl-d to deselect, and you’ve got a die-cut title to place anywhere on your layout.

Have a wonderful Photoshop Friday! Please link me up when you get a layout done. I’d love to see! :D

-J