Working with Text

With the Text tool, you can type text in your project, using various fonts and texts attributes. Text objects are part of a drawing, so you can manipulate them the same way. You can use the Text tools on both vector and bitmap layers.

This section includes the following topics:

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Creating Text

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Formatting Text

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Resizing the Text Box

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Converting Text into Separate Objects

Creating Text

To add text to drawings:

1. In the Tools toolbar, select the Text tool, press [Ctrl]+[Shift]+[T] (Windows) or [⌘] +[Shift]+[T] (Mac OS X) or select Tools > Text.

2. In the Timeline or Thumbnails view, select the panel and layer that contains the drawing on which you want to add text.

3. In the Stage view, click the location at which you want to add text.

4. You can use the Text properties in the Tool Properties view to select the font, font size and format of the text you will type—see Formatting Text.

5. Type in the desired text.

6. Click outside the text box to exit the typing mode.

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If you want to create another text object, click outside the currently active text box. You can always return to edit the text by selecting the Text tool and clicking in the text.

Formatting Text

Use the Text Tool Properties view to select the font type and other formatting options you want to apply to the text.

Font Type

Use this drop-down menu to select the desired font, from the list of fonts available in your system.

Font Style

Use these buttons to select a desired style for your text:

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Bold

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Italic

Alignment

Use these buttons to align the paragraph.

Left	Centred
Right	Justified

Font Size

Type the desired size for the text in this field. You can also use the up and down arrow buttons to set the desired value.

Kerning

Use the kerning field to modify the spacing between letters and characters. You can select the Auto Kern option to set the kerning automatically, based on the font’s predefined standard. A negative value decreases spacing between each character creating a letter overlap and a positive value increases it.

Indent

Enter a value in the Indent field to increase or decrease the indentation on the first line of your text. A positive value sets the first line of your paragraph farther to the right and a negative value sets it farther to the left.

Line Spacing

Enter a value in the Line Spacing field to decrease or increase the space between each line of text.

Resizing the Text Box

You can resize the text box by selecting your text box with the Text tool and moving the anchor point right or left.

Using the Select tool will distort and scale your text itself rather than changing the width and height of your text box.

Converting Text into Separate Objects

Text contained in a text field is treated as a single drawing object. You can easily separate the text so that each character becomes an individual drawing object that you can select and modify independently.

To break a text object:

1. In the Tools toolbar, click the Select tool or press [Alt]+[S].

2. In the Stage View, select the text object you want to break.

3. Right-click the text and select Convert > Break ApartText Layers.

Each character is now surrounded by its own bounding box that you can modify, they remain text objects that you can edit.

4. If you want to convert your independent letter to a complete vector object that you can deform, using the Select tool, select the letters to convert.

5. Right-click the text and select Convert > Break ApartText Layers to break the selection into a regular drawing object, with no more text attributes.