Text
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A Text layer holds editable text.
Add text
Section titled “Add text”- Pick the Type tool.
- Click in the Viewer.
- Type.
Style it
Section titled “Style it”Set the font, size, letter-spacing, fill colour, and stroke.
A text layer is a layer, so it also takes effects, masks, and a transform like any other.
Run it along a path
Section titled “Run it along a path”Text can follow one of the layer’s own masks.
- With the text layer selected, draw a path on it with the pen. Leave its mode as None if you only want the curve.
- In the Source section of Effect Controls, set Path to that mask.
Path offset appears beside it and slides the whole line along the curve, in pixels. A closed path wraps; an open one drops the letters that fall off either end.
The mask stays an ordinary mask: drag its points, keyframe it, and the words follow. Deleting it lays the line straight again.
Animators
Section titled “Animators”An animator offsets the letters of a line, and a range selector says which letters it reaches. Add animator, at the foot of the Animators section in Effect Controls, gives you one with every row already there, defaulted to values that change nothing.
| Row | What it does |
|---|---|
| Range start, Range end | Where the stretch of letters begins and ends, as a per cent of the line. |
| Range offset | How far the whole stretch is slid along. |
| Based on | Whether the range counts Characters or Words. |
| Shape | Square — inside the range or not — or Ramp, rising evenly across the range and holding past its end. |
| Position, Rotation, Scale, Opacity | What a letter the range reaches does. |
| Fill offset | Three numbers added to the layer’s fill colour. |
A letter half inside the range gets half the offset. A letter turns about its own middle on the baseline, and everything an animator does happens inside the letter’s own frame.
Several animators on one layer compose: pushes, turns and tints add, scales and opacities multiply.
Convert it
Section titled “Convert it”Layer ▸ Create turns a selected text layer into something else, as a copy directly above it. The original stays a text layer.
- Shapes from text makes a shape layer of the letters’ outlines, taken from the font. Masks and paint do not come across.
- Points from text makes a copy that emits a stream of points in the shape of the words, through Emit from image.