The Problem
One thing I’ve noticed designers do to make text stand out from the background is to give it a stroke. This does help, but stroking type is like giving it a faux bold in Photoshop! Please don’t!
Most type designers have worked quite hard to make the proportions of their fonts perfect. When you add a stroke, this messes up all their meticulous efforts! It also looks bad because if you add the stroke to the outside of the type in Photoshop, you get rounded edges instead of squared off ones. The way to combat this is to put the stroke on the inside, but doing that will make the thinner lines of a typeface disappear.
The Solution
Take your text into Illustrator. In Illustrator, you can use a tool called Offset Path.
- Make a new type object and put your text on it
- Copy the object and select the one on the bottom
- Turn the type into paths: Type (menu) > Create Outlines, or Shift + Ctrl (or Cmd for you Macs) + o
- With the object still selected, go to Object (menu) > Path > Offset Path
- A dialog box will appear where you can enter by how much you want to offset the path. If you’re using CS3, you’re lucky; it’s the first version to have a preview check box. If you’re in CS2 (Illustrator 12) or lower, you’ll just have to guess. Try starting with 0.02 inches.
Using offset path will preserve the integrity of the corners and line weights of the type. Yes, it does take a little extra effort, but you will end up with a much cleaner result than if you had used a stroke shortcut in Photoshop.
Look at the enlarged examples below. Which one do you think looks best?
Technorati Tags: Graphic Design, Typography, Illustrator, Stroke
haha… I’m one of those guilty designers. I just couldn’t find the right colour to make my text stand out when designing my group writing project badges, so I used the stroke. I didn’t know about the Illustrator option, will try it out tonight. Thanks, Lauren (the 3rd letter does look more natural).
well, at least, I never use faux bold in PS
It was one of those things I learned in school and I figured everyone knew! But since finding out that wasn’t true, I thought I’d share
I’m glad you found it useful!
I did not know that…Thanks for the tip!
Hi Nap Warden! Welcome and I’m glad this was useful for you! Hope to see you around more often
Likewise, I’ve not used that Illustrator tip. I completely agree about not adding strokes however. The last time I did was probably back in college.
I find it useful sometimes to add a stroke to my type, but if I end up doing that for the final design, I always take it into illustrator and use Offset Path. I think it’s usually only necessary to “stroke” type this way when the background is especially busy and white or black type just doesn’t stand out enough.
I agree that it is overdone by those who don’t know better and used to ill effect by those who haven’t got a clue. I believe there is an art to the use of strokes on text and should be used sparingly and to the best effect on a piece of artwork.
I’m a Freehand user myself, and believe, I never overused this effect, I must state I hate people doing type in photoshop it looks so damn fugly – and murder when there is amendments. Photoshop should be used for one thing and one thing only – image creation and manipulation – it is called Photoshop after all.
Nice blog by the way Lauren
Hi Ian! Thanks for saying hi and sharing your thoughts! You are totally right, there is definitely an art to stroking type. Generally I try to stay away from doing it, but sometimes the text really doesn’t stand out enough against it’s background and it becomes necessary to find something to differentiate it. I prefer to use a screened back box between the background and text if I can.
I use text in Photoshop for some things, when it’s appropriate (web buttons and such). But there really isn’t enough control of the look when you use anything but a page layout program like InDesign to deal with true page layout.
I’m pleased you hear you like my blog! Will you subscribe?
yep, i also meant to ask, what is meant by your section “meme”?
Memes are those tagging games the people send around to have other bloggers respond to. Take a look at the posts there. They are articles like Face Behind the Blog, 8 Things About Me, 5 Things About Design and Me (I only participated in that last one). Most of the time they are just a way to get to know the blog author better, but sometimes they can actually be adapted to the blog topic. I also include writing project and prize drawing entries in that category. It’s the social stuff I participate in. I’m sure that explination is way more than you needed!
I find a useful technique for stroking type is to copy your type object, do a Paste Behind, and stroke the object you just pasted. This always preserves the shape of the type because it’s on top of the stroked version. The you can play with mitres and smooth corners and all that. Saves the trouble of having to convert to paths, so it’s still editable.
If you want to make an effect with multi-colored strokes, just copy-n-paste behind, using a larger stroke than the last one. The trick I use is that half of your stroke weight is outside the shape, so if you want a 2pt stroke, you need a 4pt stroke applied to the type object below your original.
foresmac,
But it’s still a good way to do it because, like you’ve mentioned, the text remains editable–you just have to change it in two places. But that’s better than going through the offset path process again! Oh, and another way to create the duplicate is to go to the layers palette and drag the original object onto the new layer icon to duplicate it. Then select the bottom object and put the stroke on it; same thing, different steps. Thanks for sharing!
I’m so glad you stopped by to share that technique!! I had never thought to do that before! I was hoping this could be done in Photoshop, too, so I wouldn’t have to be switching between Illustrator and Photoshop, but it didn’t work
Yeah, there are definitely more ways to to that, but Cmd-C, Cmd-B (sub Ctrl if you’re on a Windows machine) and the newly pasted-behind type is selected for stroking. If you’re a keyboard-shortcut maven, as I am, that’s the way to go.
Foresmac,
Thanks for the enlightenment. And yes, I love shortcuts. Have you downloaded the little page I created from the link at the bottom of the RSS feed? I’ve also had a few features here about Photoshop and InDesign shortcuts.