We’re not going to waste a lot of paper describing every turn taken by the Fit Text to Path command—this is one set of controls that must be used to be learned. On the other hand, we can offer a few rules of thumb, and some good and bad examples of well-executed text fit to a path. Here is our starting text and curve.

Choose Your Curve Wisely

Above all, text must be readable. If you lose the message in the medium, you’ve lost everything. A sure way to do that with the Fit Text to Path command is to choose the wrong path. If your path has sharp corners, the only way the Fit Text effect will work is if the text turns the corner between two words. In most cases, though, that would be blind luck. As you can see here, the result is disastrous, with the beginning of the word “uphill” falling into a canyon. Moral: Use rounded corners, not sharp ones.

Choose Your Typeface Wisely

If you are pushing text along the contour of a crooked path, you need to choose a typeface with good shock absorbers. In the second effort at fitting text to a curve, the curve is much smoother than the previous one. But notice that the ostentatious Expo face can’t handle even the slightest bump.

In the third try, we solved these two problems by switching to a more nimble typeface (Berkeley Book) and by smoothing out the curve even more. It was easy: with the Shape tool we selected each of the two sharply turning nodes, deleted one, and turned the other into a smooth node.

Keep Your Distance

What else is wrong with our fitted text? The text is sitting right on top of the curve—very distracting. Either the text needs to be lifted off the curve, or the curve needs to be removed altogether. (With many designs, the text simply becomes the curve, not needing any other shape.)

So here’s Take 4: we set the Distance from Path just enough to raise the descenders up off the curve. You can see from the property bar where to set this—we chose a value of .125 inch.

Incidentally, this little exercise pretty well typifies how most people use Fit Text to Path: they fiddle, they fumble, they flounder, they futz, and eventually they get where they want to go. Few people get there on the first try.

We considered removing the outline altogether. (Not the curve, but just its outline; the curve must remain for the effect to stay dynamic.) But we decided instead to tint it from solid black to a medium gray.

The final tweak—and you judge for yourself whether you prefer it or not—came at the hands of the text orientation control, the one at the left end of the property bar. The vertical skew and the slight upward rotation give the impression that the letters are actually climbing up the curve. The control is included in the accompanying graphic because, again, it’s practically impossible to describe this text orientation control. But since you asked: “You know the first drop-down box with the fat ABC letters? Click on it and choose the second set of fat letters.” There.

We carefully chose this example of text fitting, picking something that started out with big problems, to show you the pitfalls. Figure 10.5 is an example that has no problems. Corel’s Technical typeface is perfect for text fitting because its letterforms are friendly and appear to be walking an uneven path, anyway. Also, the tree branch in this figure is an ideal path, with smooth and friendly curves. Finally, the text is comfortably positioned off the path, preserving the integration of the two elements while avoiding overcrowding.

Transparent Text

The next effect, and the one that follows it, is not at all difficult to produce, provided that you have prepared the text properly. In fact, it would be safe to say that in producing the transparent effect shown in Figure 10.6, preparation is the key to everything.

FIGURE 10.5  This fitted text is an unqualified success.

FIGURE 10.6  Transparent text is easy; preparing the text is tricky.

The wrinkle in all of this is the text’s cozy condition: each of the letters overlaps its neighbors, and that carries its own set of issues and requirements. Let’s step through this.

1.  First, import the photograph. You can use 863057.wi from CD No. 3, in Photos\Landscap. Press F4 to zoom tight.

2.  Create a string of text. We chose the word SUNSET and we set it in Seagull Heavy from Corel’s typeface collection. Thick faces work best.

3.  Set the text to White and size and stretch it so that it is as big as the photo. Don’t worry about sizing proportionally; symmetry adds nothing to the effect.

If your screen starts to pan when you size the text near the edge, just press F4 again.

You could apply the transparent effect now and save yourself several minutes, but it will look much better if the text overlaps itself. It will be worth the following effort:

4.  Switch to the Shape tool and drag the lower-right handle toward the middle of the text. As you do, the letters move closer to each other.

5.  Continue until each letter overlaps the ones next to it.

Some will overlap more than others, warranting a bit of individual kerning. For instance, in the graphic above, the U and N are barely touching, while the E and T overlap quite a bit. To fix this, select the node to the left of the T and bump it a bit to its right, using the Horizontal Shift value in the property bar.

6.  Once kerned, switch back to the Pick tool and stretch the text back out so it fills the picture from left to right.

If you were to apply transparency to the text now, the effect would be deficient, because the areas where the characters overlap would become opaque gaps. You can see this easily enough just by selecting the text, activating the Interactive Transparency tool from the toolbox, and choosing any type of transparency from the property bar. We wish there were a text control called Remove Holes or something, whereby overlapping text would appear seamlessly. Because there isn’t; you need to convert the text to curves and break apart the letterforms:

7.  Convert the text to curves with Arrange Ø Convert to Curves (or Ctrl+Q). As soon as you do, you’ll see the effect we spoke of where the characters overlap.

8.  Then break apart the letters with Arrange Ø Break Apart (Ctrl+K).

With the letters broken apart, the overlap problem appears to be solved, because each letter is now its own curve. To be technical, instead of each letter being a subpath of one collective curve (producing the overlap effect), it is its own curve. But the fact remains that each character still overlaps its neighbor, meaning that the transparent effect won’t be uniform (in the overlapping areas, there will be a second layer of transparent elements). Take a trip into Wireframe view (View Ø Wireframe), and you’ll see what we mean.

That’s why you need to continue:

9.  Select all six characters and go to Arrange Ø Shaping Ø Weld.

10.  Click Weld To on the Shaping docker and head out to the page.

11.  Click anywhere within the letters.