TUTORIAL: Outlining Images and Text

Outlining

In this tutorial, I'll be teaching how to use outlining in graphics. This tutorial, as always, is designed to be used in conjunction with Paint Shop Pro.

You can see examples of outlining of both images and text in the following graphic:



Outlining Images

1. Set up your images to your liking. In the graphic above, I've used a texture as a background, then placed an image of a girl onto that, erasing everything I didn't want.

Here's what I have so far

2. Create a new raster layer, then select your freehand selection tool. In the tool options box, choose 'point to point'.

3. Outline the image using the selection tool, going from 'point to point' and roughly estimating the shape of the image. Leave around 4-5 pixels between the outline and the image, as can be seen here . Right click, and the selection will become a floating marquee, as in this screencap.

4. Flood fill inside the selection with white, and press ctrl+D to deselect the floating marquee. Here's what we have now. Drag this layer beneath the layer with the image on, giving us this.

5. Create a new raster layer and repeat step three, but outline just inside the white, like this . Flood fill this selection with the colour of your choice, I used an orange eyedropped from the background. Drag this layer beneath the image. We now have something like this .

6. And there we have it, a nice outlined image!

Outlining Text

1. Create your desired text on a new vector layer.

2. Create a new raster layer, and click to add text. In the text creation box, choose "Create As: Selection", and press OK.

Click here to see steps one and two.

3. Go to selections >> modify >> expand, and type in the number of pixels you wish to expand by. I'm going for 2 pixels.

4. Flood fill the selection with the colour of your choice. The image below shows the selection expanded and floodfilled:



5. Press ctrl+D to deselect the selection, then move the layer down so it's beneath the first piece of text. Position it so it's underneath the first text, and voila, outlined text!

Hm... I have PSP XI, so my text creation box is different: it doesn't have "Create As: Selection." But with my nifty Magic Wand tool, my outcome was very similiar to yours

my try in photoshop:

It's not the best, but there it is XD

This was the easist for me. i like it.

This tutorial is now retired.