Having just bought a new computer and color printer, I've got plans to print up new graphics for pen-and-ink starship drawings I've done over the years. I'm looking for suggestions about how to do the correct, two-tone hull lettering from the movie era on. I've got the Starfleet Bold Extended font, but I'm not sure where to go from here. I'd really appreciate any help I can get. Thanks.
Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
Well, in CorelDraw, I just convert the StarfleetBldExt to curves, and break up those curves into individual shapes. Then I delete the excess shapes, and make the 'outline' shapes red.
Sounds like a lot of work, and it is a bit fiddly, but I can't think of another way.
Posted by RoboCaptainMike47 (Member # 709) on :
in Photoshop, I usually use the select wand to select only the text in the text layer, then on a new layer grouped with it (under it), i modify the selection (expand it by several pixels) so it is the space away from the text i want the outline to be, then subtract some intervening pixels to be the transparent (or color them white, depending on the style of label) part in between, and fill the selection red or what have you.
you might even rasterize the text and do it in the same layer, since if you retype new text in you will have to erase the outline and draw it from scratch.
A way to make the outline dynamic is to use a layer style, stacking two or more layers that outline the text, using outer glow or drop shadow to provide the appropriate outline, although it is trick to set the fade and falloff to look crisp like the outline should. while more adaptable, i still havent managed to tweak enough settings to make this technique very good, but know that you need to select 'precise' rather than 'softer' in the style dialogue...