Photoshop Tutorial : Warping Type

By Jennifer | Aug 22 2006 |

It’s easy to add a bit of flair to your text using the Warp dialog box. Warping lets you distort type into a wide range of shapes, such as a flag, a wave or a fisheye. The warp style you select is an attribute of the type layer - you can change a layer’s warp style at any time to change the overall shape of the warp.

1. Open a new file or open an existing image file that you want to add some text to. I’m using an image of some running legs.

2. Select the Horizontal Type tool (), and in the Character palette, choose Century as the typeface, 72 pt as the size and white as the colour. (make sure you don’t have a white background or you won’t see your text!)

3. Click anywhere on the image and type some text. Then click the Commit Any Current Edits button () on the tool options bar.

The words appear on the image and a new layer appears in the Layers palette. The new layer will be name whatever you typed in. In this example, I typed the word Running, so the new layer is automatically called Running.

4. Click on your new text layer in the Layers palette to make sure it is selected and then click on the Create Warp Text button on the tool options bar.

The Warp Text dialog box opens.

5. In the Warp Text dialog box, choose Style > Flag and click the Horizontal radio button. For Bend , specify + 25%. Then click OK.

The words you typed will appear to ruffle like a flag in the wind. Easy as that!
I repeated steps 4 and 5 with the words “Away” layer, to create the image below: