Tips & Trucks 14 from Maya

[Maya]

What about Fonts?

Font-talk

There are plenty of websites which offer Free Fonts
Some nice websites with great Free Fonts:

http://www.1001freefonts.com
http://www.dafont.com

* Remark

Always download your Fonts from a trustful website, see also my remark in Tips & Trucks 10

Suggestion:

> Make a new Map in Your Documents, call this Map: My Fonts,
> Than, again, make a new Map (in the My Fonts-map) with the name of the new Font as a Title
> Place the Zip-file you have downloaded in this Map, scan your Zip-file extra for security reasons
> Then Unzip it and open the File in the Map
(I use JustZip it but you can use any other Free Zip-program of your liking of course)

If you download a lot of Fonts, you get a good overview this way, a good Fonts Archive

How to import your New Font?

> Open the Map with your New Font> copy the Open or True-Lettertype File (.ttf) you want to import
> Go to the Configuration-screen of your computer
> Open the Map> Fonts and Paste it there

Now if you open your AW Program or your MS Word.. you see the Font in the Fontlist and you can work with it

*Remark

There are some exceptions, not every Font is suitable for using in your Programs
Never mind.. look for another Font!

Tutorial 3

3D Fonts created with Black or coloured Edges

Preparation

> New Canvas: 800x600> White
> Duplicate this BG Layer, once or twice
> Choose a big bold Font
> Options (in the Header)> Bold> Size 200 or a bit less> Anti-aliased> Color Black> Apply

* Remark

When you work at your concept/design and you are not sure, yet, how large your Text- block must become...It is always better to position larger Fonts than smaller Fonts
because you get a better quality by shrinking than by enlarging your Text-layer, later on

Start

> Put some random Text on your Canvas> Apply
> Go to> Layer (in the Header) and choose> Rasterize Layer.. you see this Layer's Background change to Transparant
> Select (Header)> Autoselect> Image Luminance
> Select (Header)> Feather> about 5 till 10
> Select (Header)> Modify> choose Contract> about 10

> Image (Header)> Fill with a Colour of your choise or try out White for a great effect
> Or choose Image(Header)> Fill with a Gradient (Suggestion: the Rainbow-gradient for another great Edge-effect)
> Duplicate your Text-layer > Mode Multiply for a maximum effect

Save your Text document or painting in AW Format and as JPG or PNG

These were the basics of this type of Text-effects and you can do your own experiments now with different settings etc.

Maya