Text

This transformation creates a version of the input image with a text overlay and optionally a solid background rectangle. You can control the size, location, text color, background color, and font of the text. To place text in the margin of an image, first use the Add Border transformation to create a border around the image.

Positioning the text

You position the text over the input image by dragging the text rectangle displayed as an overlay on the input image. Initially this text rectangle is located at the center of the input image.

Positioning the background rectangle

If Text Margins (see below) is set to -1, you can position the background rectangle over the input image by clicking and dragging its corners, sides, or interior. If an opaque background is selected (see below), then this background rectangle will be filled with the background color (see below). Initially the background rectangle covers the entire input image.

Only that part of the text that overlaps the background rectangle will be visible, any part of the text that falls outside the background rectangle is cut off. For this reason, if you are using a transparent background and no text margins, it is best to leave the background rectangle covering the entire input image.

Font

This control lets you select the font you wish to use for the text from a list of all the fonts installed on your system.

Font Size

The font size control lets you select the size of the text by specifying the line height in pixels.

Font Style

The two-button bold/italic tool bar lets you select normal, bold, italic, or bold-italic type.

Clicking the drop shadow button pops up a Drop Shadow dialog box you can use to specify drop shadows. A drop shadow is a blurred, offset version of the text placed behind the text to make it look like it is floating above the image. By adjusting the parameters in the Drop Shadow dialog box you can adjust the offset, angle, transparency, softness, and color of the drop shadow. Clicking the Drop Shadow button a second time closes the Drop Shadow dialog box.

Line Spacing

This control lets you specify the amount of spacing between successive lines of text (assuming you enter more than one line). The line spacing (somethime called leading) can be adjusted in increments of 1/8 line from 0.5 (half spacing) to 2.0 (double spacing).

Alignment

This control lets you choose how the text is aligned. When you choose Center, Left, Right, Top, Bottom, Upper Left, Upper Right, Lower Left, or Lower Right, the corresponding part of the rectangle containing the text is aligned with the alignment point you position over the input image (see above).

Text

You enter the text to be painted over the image here. The edit control will scroll as necessary to accommodate up to 256 lines of text and up to 32000 characters. To transfer large amounts of text from a document or other program, you can copy the text onto the clipboard and then paste it into the Text control. To paste into an edit control, simply click on the control to make the cursor a caret (vertical line) and then press Ctrl-V.

To enter special characters click the Unicode... button and select the character or symbol you want to insert.

To enter macros, click the Macro... button.

Text Color

This control lets you select the text color.

Text Transparency

The Text Transparency slider lets you adjust the transparency of the text.

Background Color

This control lets you select the color of the background rectangle. This setting is ignored if Background Transparency is set to be 100% (see below).

Background Transparency

The Background Transparency slider lets you adjust the transparency of the background rectangle.

Text Margins

If Text Margins is set to -1, the background rectangle can be positioned manually to any desired size or location. If Text Margins is zero or greater, the background rectangle is made to fit around the text box with equal margins (in pixels), and the rectangle cannot be repositioned manually.

Outline Color

This control lets you select the color of a border drawn just inside the background rectangle. This setting is ignored if Outline Width (see below) is set to 0.

Outline Width

This controls sets the width (in pixels) of the outline drawn just inside the edges of the background rectangle. No outline is drawn if Outline Width is set to 0. If the Outline Width is greater than or equal to the Text Margins setting, it is treated as though you entered the Text Margins setting minus one.

Tips

To create a mask for the input image that just contains text, leave the background rectangle covering the entire input image, make the background opaque, and leave the text color black and the background color white. Then proceed to enter your text, select fonts, position the text over the image, etc. Finally, when you click OK, an image will be created that contains only the black text over a white background. You can then use this image as a mask to create various special effects based on the text you have entered.

To create blocks of text with different fonts, colors, or alignments, you must use the text transformation once for each block. As an aid to aligning the different blocks of text, it is often useful to display a grid over the input image.

You may also find the Lines, Arrows, Text tool useful when using text to annotate a specific feature in an image.