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Warping Text

One of the major complaints about Photoshop used to be that you couldn't set type in anything but a straight line. If you wanted, say, a wavy line of text, you had to either position the letters one by one or set the type in Illustrator or something similar and import it into Photoshop. It was a nuisance, at best. Those days are long gone. As of Photoshop 7, Adobe added warped text. Rather than drawing your own path, the Warp Text dialog box allows you to select from 15 preset paths. You can also warp and distort the paths as necessary. Figure 17.22 shows a list of the presets.

The dialog box settings, shown in Figure 17.23, are a little bit tricky at first. Use the sliders to increase the amount of Bend applied to the path. Moving to the right bends words up; to the left (negative numbers) bends them down. Distortion makes the line of type appear to flare out on one end (Horizontal Distortion), or flare from top to bottom (Vertical Distortion).

In Figure 17.24, I've applied some of the warp styles to various bits of type. The best way to master this tool is to play with it. Set a line or two of type and try the different kinds of warp on it. Move the sliders around. You can't break anything.