Here's an easy way to turn regular text into a circle for an accent, and as a bonus, you can also make circles out of ribbon, lace, or ricrac... or any long, skinny borders. Very fun!
Text in a Circle
- Open your file in Photoshop or Photoshop elements.
- Type the text you would like to make into a circle.
- Now, here's a slightly tricky part: you must select your text with a perfect square. First, click your rectangular marquee tool (
) from the tools palette.
Shortcut: Type M. If this selects the circular marquee tool, type Shift + M to toggle to the rectangular selection tool. - Now, drag over your text to select it, holding down the Shift key as you drag. Holding down Shift will keep your selection a perfect square.
- If your text is not in the center of your square, use the arrow keys on your keyboard to move the selection area until the text is centered.
- Choose Filter: Distort: Polar Coordinates from the menu.
- In the Polar Coordinates dialog box, make sure 'Rectangular to Polar' is selected, then click OK.
- You will be prompted to simplify (PSE) or rasterize (CS3) the text - click OK.
Voila! Your text will now be in a circle!
Making Circles Out of Digital Ribbons
This works the same way as the text, but you must double the height of the ribbon/ricrac before you run the Polar Coordinates filter.
- Open your file in Photoshop or Photoshop elements.
- Use File: Place to import your digital ribbon into your layout.
- Select the layer with your ribbon on it. Type Ctrl + T to activate the tranform toolbar.
- In the toolbar, type "200%" in the Height box (marked with H:)
- Click the checkmark button to commit your changes.
Your ribbon will look a little distorted, but that's okay. - You can now apply the Polar Coordinates filter, using steps #3 through #8, above. See example of ricrac made into a circle, below.
Note: you may notice that the 'ends' of your ribbon/ricrac circle don't quite meet. This is because the ends might not be perfectly level. You can either hide this with another digital element in your layout or you can attempt to make sure that both ends of your ribbon are exactly level when you begin.
