Applying Text to a Graphic

This tutorial is written in Paint Shop Pro, Version 7.04, and assumes you have at least a working knowledge of PSP.

FOR THIS TUTORIAL YOU WILL NEED:
JASC's Paint Shop Pro - You can get a 30 day free trial  HERE, and a graphic of your choice.

Adding Text to a Graphic is one of the easiest, and most basic things you can do in Paint Shop Pro.

Start out with your graphic (picture). You can use your own, or, to use this one, just right click, "save as" and save to a folder on your hard drive. Every artist/tuber that I have seen
on the net, asks that you NOT change the name of the graphic, so remember where you save it, and the name of it, so you can go back to it.

Now open PSP, click on File, Open, this box will open up:

Click on the folder where you saved your graphic. Find your graphic, highlight it, and you will see 2 things:

The name of the graphic appears in the "File Name Box", and if you have "preview" checked, you will see the picture in the preview box.  Now, just click Open, and your graphic appears on your PSP desk top.

OK, we have our picture open, now we need to copy it, so that we don't change the original picture. The easy way to do this is to hold down your "Shift" key, and press D.
Walla, now we can delete the original and just work on our copy.
OK, we need to decide what color we want to write our name on our pic with. In order to choose a color that
complements your graphic, click on your "eye dropper" tool.  When you click on the eye dropper tool, it will become the cursor for your mouse. So just move your mouse over the color that you want, and right click it. This will put the color that you want into your "background"
color box, which is where you want it for your Text.
The eye dropper does not show up in the pic below, but you can see where the little box with the color numbers are. This is where I selected my color.

This corresponds with the color numbers in the color box.

Now, go to your tool bar again, and find the "Text Tool".
Click on it, move your cursor over your graphic where you want  your text to be, and this box will open.

Notice there are several things you need to check here.
1. Name of Font, you can change this by clicking on the down arrow next to it.
2. Size of Font, you can also change this by clicking on the down arrow next to it.
3. Notice that your choice of color is in the "Fill" box. This is where we want it.
4. Type your name, just as you would type anywhere else.
5. Antialias is ALWAYS checked. This gives your font a smooth finish, without any jaggies.
6. We are using the "floating" button now. This will allow you to move your text around anywhere on your graphic until you deselect it.  Now just click OK.

Your name will appear on your graphic, and it will have the "marching ants" around it.

If it is not where you want it to be, just click on your "moving" tool,  and move your text
around until it is where you want it to be.
Then go to "Selections",

then "Select None".

Go up to "File", "Save As", and this box will open:

You will notice that the File name is a .psp, but click on the little down arrow, and this box will open:

Scroll until you file the JPEG type, unless your graphic is animated, or transparent, then you would want to save it as a .gif.  When you click on the JPEG line, it will automatically put the .jpg in your file name, and you can click on Save.

You now have a cute little tag you can use as a sig.
I hope you enjoyed doing this, and it helped you learn a little.

If you are confused about something, or need additional help, please don't hesitate to contact me here.