Jacquelin Vanderwood
March 2005
The first thing we need to do is create a solid for this lesson. Make sure to click on Make Comp Size. Also check to see that Cap Locks is off or you won't see the solid.
The next step is to choose Text and then select Path Text.
At this point the Path Text box appears giving you the option of choosing the font and style. You would also type the text here.
After pressing OK, immediately you'll see the text appear on screen. Notice that the text is red. This is the default color. It is also on default Shape Type which is Bezier.
If we want to see the original background, we would go to the bottom of the Path Text box and click on Composite On Original.
This would certainly be an eye catcher but hardly readable. Since the text is in default color, let's go ahead and change it.
Under Fill and Stroke we see an option called Fill Color with a color box next to it. Click on it and select a new color.
At this point, if you want to change the text or font, simply click on Edit Text in the Path Text box located at the top.
Another interesting option we can apply is either Fill Only which is what we have right now, or Stroke Only which is the outside design of the text, or both Fill Over Stroke, or Stroke Over Fill.
Here we have Shape Type which allows us to design our type in Bezier mode, in a Circle or a Loop, or on a Line.
Under Character we can change the size of the text, the tracking and kerning, the orientation, the horizontal shear and scale, and the vertical scale.
Finally, the last part of the Path Text panel contains Paragraph. Basically this gives us the options of aligning our text left, right, center, or force justify. We can specify the amount of the left and right margin. If we have several lines of text, we can tell it the amount of line spacing needed. The last selection is Baseline Shift which primarily tells the text to go higher or lower. So now that we know what is contained in the Path Text panel. we can plan our next move which would be to animate the text. I'll cover that in another tutorial.
Copyright (c) 2005, Jacquelin Vanderwood, All Rights Reserved
