I need a banner for my tutorial page so that is what I am going to make here, if you want to make something other than a banner then open the appropriate size image in PSP with a transparent background and that way we can add the background color of our page or whatever we want when we are done with the text. I opened a 500 x 100 image with a transparent background. Choose the text tool, set your background color to any color, make it one of the colors you want in your actual finsihed image. I started with the dark blue for grins. lol Make sure that your foreground color is set to null. (Fig.vt1)

Click anywhere inside your canvas to bring up the text dialog box. Choose the font size you want from the selections, then the size, I chose the BROADWAY font and set my size to 48. Set the kerning and leading both to 0, make sure that you still have the color you want in your style palette and then check the box at the bottom under you display text that says VECTOR. (Fig-vt2)

Once you have everything the size, font, color, etc the way you want it click the ok button and you should see your text appear on your canvas with the vector bounding boxes surrounding the text. (Fig-vt3)

Now the neat part, this is where we "convert the text to curves" but first we need to group them. Open your layers palette and click the (+) sign beside the layer (which should  be called layer 1 by deafult) to expand the layer, you should see a large "A" and then what ever text you typed. I typed "tutorials" for my banner. You will see your name or whatever text you typed in the dialog box. (Fig-vt4)

Now RIGHT CLICK the text layer in your layers palette and you will be presented with a menu, towards the end there is a "Convert Text to Curves option" select that one and then from the next two choices you get you need to select the "As single charachter shapes" option from the menu. (Fig-vt5)

Almost there ! hee hee. Now take a look at your layers palette and you will see that you had a lot more there than you did just a minute ago. PSP has converted your text that you typed in to individual vector shapes that you can edit. (Fig-vt6) You can even export the shape and keep it if you like for later use which is always neat and handy !

Now we can change the colors and stuff on our letters. I left my first letter "T" the dark blue and then started with my second letter "U". Right click your second layer and choose the "Properties" option from the menu. (Fig-vt7)

 


After you have selected properties a dialog box will appear. Click on the color selector to change the font color of that letter. I chose a green for my second letter and didn't do anything to my lines, but if you want to change the lines that make up your text then you can change them here also. (Fig-vt8)

Repeat this step for each layer until you have each letter the color you want the letter to be. I just alternated my colors with solid colors, you can always add a new stroke color (outline) here, add a gradient or pattern fill here or just keep it solid as I did. Your layers palette should resemble mine (but with your text) and the letters in the layers palette should NOT be bold, maybe one will be and that is ok. (Fig-vt9)

Go ahead and click on the layer 1 in the layers palette now just to make sure it is the acitve layer. Choose selections and SELECT ALL. All the letters in your layers pallete should now be bold indicating they are all selected together, if the are not (which happens sometimes for unknown reasons) try choosing selections >select none and then do the Selections>Select All again. Why? I don't know but I have found it to work. (Fig-vt10)

Then go to Objects/Group. (Fig-vt11)

In your layers palette you should now have a layer called GROUP, right click this layer and again you will have a large menu of options appear similar to what you seen earlier. (Fig-vt12)

Choose the option near the end that says "Create Raster Selection" you should then see your marching ants dancing around the text letters instead of the entire canvas. Then RIGHT CLICK layer one and choose the "Convert to Raster Option" from the menu. Your vector layer will now be a raster layer that you can add a shadow too. (Fig-vt14)

And that is how I did it. At this point since I had the raster selection on a raster layer now I just added a drop shadow. Choose Effects>3D> and then Drop Shadow. I added a simple black drop shadow, with offsets of both set to 1 and the Opacity set to 34 with a blur of 24. Once you are happy with the shadow settings then click the "OK" button to apply. (Fig.vt15)

And here is my compete banner that I have on my Tutorials page. Visit the Tutorials page to see the other text that is made the same way and it displayed with the background.