Life Behind A Lens

This Gimp tutorial will show you how to create outlined text like in the example below the tutorial:

This is a fairly simple procedure and one that I’ve used on a number of my t-shirt designs.

So, here we go (I’m going to assume that you know how to use the text tool to write text on your image and how to move it around to where you want it):

Preliminary steps

• Make sure that you have your text written using the text tool, placed where you want it and coloured in the colour that you like.
• Ensure that you have the colour(s) that you’d like to use for your outline(s) selected as the foreground and background colours (in the toolbox panel)

Outlining your text

• Once you have your text placed where you want it, Right Click the layer in the layers, channels, paths tool panel (default is to the right of your image window) and click duplicate layer (normally 5th down from the top)
• Name your new layer Outline 1
• Right Click on your new layer and select Alpha to Selection (third up from bottom) You should now see your text marked as a selection.
• Go to your image window and choose select->Grow A new dialogue box will appear.
• In the dialogue box, choose the size of the increase that you’d like to grow your text by (It’s normally best to leave the unit of measurement as pixels).

Note: This will depend on how large the text is to start with and the effect that you want to generate. Experiment a little until you get it the way you like it by simply using Gimps fantastic undo tool. Edit->Undo

• Once you have selected a growth size, you should see the selection mask has got bigger around your text.
• Now, go to Edit->Fill with FG colour or Edit->Fill with BG colour (depending on which colour you want directly behind the text).
• You should now have larger text filled with the colour that you have just selected.
• Now we need to make your original text visible again. To do this, simply move your Outline 1 layer underneath your original text layer (Simply drag & drop) in the layers, channels, paths tool panel.
• You should now have your original text outlined.

Adding a second outline colour

• This is exactly the same as the steps above except this time you need to start with your Outline 1 layer.and make that one grow.

Note: Name this latest layer Outline 2 _to make them easier to identify.

You can repeat this effect as many times as you like.. Well, until you fill your image up with layered text, anyway!

Important!!! You need to ensure that your original text box in the image is large enough to cater for the growth of the text. If it isn’t, when you duplicate the text layer and grow it, you will end up with parts of the outline missing

That’s about it for this How To Have fun with your text!!

Example of Outlined Text