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Open an image and add text to it.

Overview

Name of explainer: Open an image and add text to it

Creative theme: Image editing

Software used: PaintShop Pro

User level: BEGINNER

This is explainer 4 of 5 in this series

This series includes:

Open an image, resize it and save it
Open an image, rotate it and crop it
Open an image and apply basic colour correction
Open an image and add text
Create a new image with a single-colour background

The Software

This series of beginner explainers uses PaintShop Pro. You can download a free 30 day demo version at Corel’s website. (PC only).

This month we’re also running explainer series for Photoshop (which requires a paid monthly or yearly subscription) and GIMP (which is completely free).

The pre-requisities

This is a BEGINNER workflow explainer, so you just need to install and open the software. We’ll take it from there.

If you’re new to IT / computing, you may need help downloading and installing the software. Start with a search for ‘how do i install paintshop pro’ or speak with someone who’s familiar with downloading and installing.

Why would I do this?

Adding text directly on top of an image can be the quickest way to create a simple greeting, meme or poster. In a professional environment text will be added in separate layout or publishing software such as Adobe Illustrator or Affinity Publisher, but adding it directly to an image will always be helpful for a quick and easy workflow!

Let’s do it!

Click the play icon to watch this video. Subtitles are available – Click the settings cog at the bottom right for options. You can also watch this video full-screen by clicking the full-screen icon at the bottom right.

Good to know

The text fonts (or ‘typefaces’) available from within Paintshop Pro are those which are already built-in to your computer plus any that have been installed by other software. You can also find and download fonts at sites including dafont.com:

Quality and pricing varies, and check a font includes a ‘full’ character set if you will need it for diverse projects, as some fonts only include numbers, letters and basic punctuation.

Where to next?

The art of TYPOGRAPHY is a course in itself. Here’s a nice introduction illustrating the timeline from metal typesetting through to the screen fonts in use today:

Remember, this is part of a series of explainers for this software – Join us again for the other explainers in the series 🙂

Notes and updates

There are no notes or advisories at this time. This video explainer was last updated in February 2023. This page was last updated in February 2023.

We at pixels.cool are not responsible for the content of any external webpages or software downloaded from third party sites. Links are included in good faith at the time of writing. All explainer content is compiled in good faith using processes and methods used by the team. Modern software gives users many ways in which to accomplish the same task, and for reasons of clarity we choose not to reference multiple options. All computer users should run up to date virus / security software at all times to minimise risk.