Is photoshop right for us?

[parental]

Gurus, hopefully you can help,
We are interested in making a graphic and unsure which software is best/least expensive that can do the job. We want to take a certain shape and fill it with a word and make the word fill the interior of that shape. Then remove any trace of the "outline" of the original shape so that all we are left with is the word in that shape. We want to use this image to export to make t shirts and bumper stickers etc...

Is photoshop the best software to do this? If so which version or package?

 

[chet webley]

Hi parental,
This sounds more like an illustrator job to me, if I understand you right. You basically mean that you want a word to be "in a shape", such as the word "shoe" in the shape of a shoe, right?

Before you actually create the graphic, you should first consider how you are going to output it. If you're making bumper stickers, are they to be printed onto vinyl, or cut from vinyl? If they're cut from vinyl, you'll need a cut path, which will be best created in illustrator (or some other vector graphics software such as coreldraw)

Assuming that you require a vector graphic format (.ai, .eps, cdr etc.), then you'll need to decide what you're most comfortable with. illustrator is the daddy-oh, but expensive... coreldraw is an excellent drawing package also. there's also an open source vector graphics package (along the lines of gimp) but the name escapes me at the moment.

I personally would go down the vector graphic path anyways, as you's get MUCH more control over individual paths and nodes, which is what you'll need for this job.

one quick way to try out is this (in illustrator):-

1) draw the shape that you want the word to fit into.
2) type the word that you want to fit into the shape.
3) convert the text to paths <ctrl>+<shift>+"o" or got to menu "Type>Create Outlines".
4) move the shape so that it is above the text <ctrl>+<shift>+] or go to menu "Object>Arrange>Bring to front".
5) select both objects, and go to menu "Object>Envelope distort>Make with top object".

Illustrator will then try to distort the bottom object (the text) to fit into the top object (the shape). I have found this effect to be at times excellent, and awful. Some things distort really well, others don't.

I would probably take a bit of time and do a sketch on a piece of paper first, scan it in and then draw the entire thing from scratch, which gives absolute control over the placement of every node and shape of every line.

Hope that helps

 

[parental]

Wow Thanks very Much Chet!
Yes, Tshirts probably most likely, then bumperstickers I would say. So I will try to find a temporary version of illustrator and see. Yes just like what you say about the shoe example.
I would want to say, make balloon or tribal stryle text and drop it into a shape like an airplane, have it "swell" up to fill the entirety of the shape so that when the outline is erased it is still quite obvious that it is an airplane.

Thanks again!

 

[KRF]

Wow Thanks very Much Chet!
Yes, Tshirts probably most likely, then bumperstickers I would say. So I will try to find a temporary version of illustrator and see. Yes just like what you say about the shoe example.
I would want to say, make balloon or tribal stryle text and drop it into a shape like an airplane, have it "swell" up to fill the entirety of the shape so that when the outline is erased it is still quite obvious that it is an airplane.

Thanks again!

Well if your looking for a trile of the software, go to Adobe.com, select the country you are in and download the trile software you are looking to use, this will last 30 days, but it is the full software, then you can see if it fits your needs.

There are tuts on this forum on how to use some of the software, if you can't find anything here, there is always YouTube to help you as well.

Feel free to ask for help tho on this forum as we will always try and help