Getting started with the Text tool in Paint by Zaweba
Point text, box text, text inside shapes or selections, outline and spiral text, with tracking, kerning and gradient fills, all editable in Paint by Zaweba.
Words turn a picture into a poster, a thumbnail, a label or an invitation. The Text tool in Paint by Zaweba is where they start, and it does rather more than drop a line of type on a photo. You can set a single line, flow a paragraph into a box, pour text into a shape or a selection, run it around an outline or spiral it in towards the centre.
Whatever you choose, the text stays editable until you decide to rasterise it, so a typo spotted at the last minute is a quick fix rather than a redo.
Point text and box text
Click once and type, and you get point text: a line that grows as you type and only breaks where you press Enter. It suits headlines, captions and single words placed by eye.
Drag a rectangle first and you get box text. The words wrap inside the box, so changing the box size reflows the paragraph. Use it for anything longer than a line, such as the details on a flyer or the small print on a label.
Text in shapes and selections
You can also use a shape or a selection as the container. Draw a circle and the paragraph fills the circle; make a selection around an empty patch of sky and the text flows into exactly that space. This is a quick way to fit words around a subject without fiddling with line breaks by hand.
Text can also follow an outline, either inside it or outside it, so a caption can hug the edge of a badge or wrap around a round logo. And it can spiral inwards, which suits decorative pieces and playful posters.
Shaping the type
The tool gives you font, weight, italic, tracking, leading and alignment. Tracking spreads or tightens every letter at once and is the best fix for a headline that looks cramped or loose. Leading is the space between lines; most body text looks better with a little more than the default when it sits on a busy photo.
Kerning adjusts the space between particular pairs of letters. Paint offers metrics kerning, which uses the spacing built into the font, optical kerning, which judges the spacing from the letter shapes, and manual kerning for the odd pair you want to nudge yourself. Big display type is where manual kerning pays off, since gaps such as the one between a capital A and V become very obvious at large sizes.
Text can take a gradient fill and a stroke. A subtle gradient gives a headline some depth, and a thin dark stroke helps light text stand out on a busy background.
Editing quickly
Double-click a word to pick it. That makes it easy to change one word to bold, swap a colour on a single word or retype a misspelt name without dragging across tiny letters. When you want finer control, the Character and Paragraph panel has the full set of options.
Mistakes to avoid with the Text tool
Rasterising too early is the big one. Once text becomes pixels, you cannot change the wording or the font. If you want to paint into the letters, put a pixel layer above the text and paint there instead.
Another is relying on size alone for hierarchy. A headline in a heavier weight with slightly tighter tracking often reads better than one that is simply huge. And on photos, check the text against the busiest part of the background; a stroke, a gradient or a slightly darker area behind the words can save legibility.
Where to go next
Once you are comfortable with the basics, Warp Text and text on a path add shape, the Type Styles panel keeps a set of graphics consistent, and Find and Replace Text with spell check catches the mistakes. All of it lives in Paint by Zaweba next to your photos and shapes, so a finished design never has to leave the app.
