REALLY simple text question

[dthomasmaddox]

I want to create a logo element for a web site, and I need to do this:

Sample the color I want to use for the background, create the background, and then write out text (of another color, obviously) on that background.

I can't do it; I can't believe it, but I can't. I'm horribly misunderstanding something at some VERY simple level. (I'm a writer, and everything about every flavor of Photoshop panics me.)

So, pretend you're telling a machine how to do it and tell me how.

You will have my profound thanks.

Tom

[Byron Gale]

Tom,

The Eyedropper tool is what you use to take a color sample. When you select the tool, note that the Options bar allows you to choose the sample size.

With the Eyedropper selected, click in an image window to pick up the color you want. To pick up color from something other than an image in PSE, first resize your PSE program window so that you can see it and you "donor" item at the same time. You need an image open in PSE to begin using the eyedropper. Click with it in your PSE document as if you were going to pick up color from there, but continue to hold the mouse button down and drag the eyedropper across your screen and it will sample whatever is under the dropper when you let OFF the mouse button.

Once you have your sample, click File > New > Blank File. In the New dialog, along with your image parameters, set the Background Contents to "Foreground Color". When you click OK, you will have a new document in your sampled color.

Next, select the Text tool in the toolbox. Note that the Options bar has a color chip. Click it (not the arrowhead next to it) and the color picker will open. Assign your Text color. (You can use the trick, as above, by dragging with the eyedropper outside PSE, if you wish, to get your color)

Once you have assigned a color, pick your other text attributes - like font, style, size...

Click with the text cursor in the image window and an insertion point begins to blink. Type.

Post back if you get lost!!

HTH,

Byron

[dthomasmaddox]

Byron,

Thanks. That was clear and helped a lot. One thing I still don't get (out of about a thousand): when I click on the little foreground/background color chips at the bottom of the toolbar and select a color from the color picker, the color chips change color, but the background and foreground don't. Shouldn't they?

So if I want to change the existing background/foreground colors, I'm not sure how to do it.

Again, thanks, and the eyedropper trick is very cool.

Tom

[MikeH]

Tom,

Once you have selected the new foreground or background colour using the picker, you then need to apply it. It doesn't change automatically.

To fill a layer with the foreground colour, press Alt-Backspace. To fill it with the background, press Ctrl-Backspace.

Also you can go to Edit > Fill Layer and under colour select Foreground or Background, or indeed choose a different colour or a pattern.

Hope this helps.

Mike

[dthomasmaddox]

MikeH,

That was amazingly clear and easy--and *so random*. Does PSE have to be figured out small piece by small piece, like some huge puzzle? At any rate, thanks enormously. That immediately made easy what had seemed like an impossible task.

Tom

[apasskey]

Hi Tom - it is an ENORMOUS puzzle and piece by piece seems to be the only way to attack it. The tutorials (written and video) and personal help on this site are the best ways to try to piece together the puzzle that I have found. I have been doing this since midMarch or so and have learned so much.

There are some helpful books too. I have the Adobe "Classroom in a Book" and Scott Kelby's "the Photoshop Elements 4 Book for Digital Photographers."

I wish there was a simplified list of how to do basic stuff all in one place - like how to make a frame, selection hints, layer stuff...all the things you need to remember to do the basic projects. I may have to make one for myself as I go along. The reason I feel the need for this is I learn to do something in a tutorial and then when I'm doing another project I need to duplicate one of the steps I learned, I have to search for the instructions through loads of stuff. I can seldom remember where I learned a certain skill. I shouldn't buy any more books or my husband will have an absolute cow!!

Anyway - Have Fun!! I have become addicted to Elements and I may need to join a 12 Step Program.

[mom to 4]

I have started a notebook (of sorts). Each time I see instructions I think I may use, I copy and paste it into a word document. I started a table of contents and put each instruction of a new page. My "notebook" is about 250 pages long. :eek: It has become a great reference for me though, I use it all the time, and had I not made the table of contents, I would be, well, you know, up the creek, without the paddle!

[dthomasmaddox]

Thanks to apasskey and Mom to 4 for the confirmation that it's not just me. Sometimes while reading Adobe help pages in particular, my brain locks up.

"Select portion of image you want to transform. Apply reverse matrix masking brush in postmodern mode, then escalate your parameters and choose needlepoint tool from menu. Normalize."

It seems as if you have to know how to do everything in order to do anything.

Again, thanks for the encouragement.

Tom

[dthomasmaddox]

I wish there was a simplified list of how to do basic stuff all in one place - like how to make a frame, selection hints, layer stuff...all the things you need to remember to do the basic projects.

Well, yeah. It's what documentation is supposed to do. Perhaps Adobe thinks it's done so. If so, I can't imagine why. Maybe it's because they're all so visual there :)

Thanks again,

Tom

[karen donnybrook]

The trouble with most mauals it is ASSUMED we know the basic stuff. When you buy a new program and plunge in the deep end, we know ABSOLUTELY NOTHING and need every last little thing spelt out with the "i's" dotted and the "t's" crossed :D

[Tom K]

Hi Tom; From one Tom to another I feel compelled to let you know
that PSE is the least intuitive program I have ever seen-- although
it's the best in my opinion..
Stick with it - read all you can - and stay with the people here on the
forum, they are the best and will help with just about any question
regarding PSE...
Stick with it...good luck.... Tom :)