Photoshop tip: Adding an outline to letters

By sylvie | May 14, 2007

I was trying to create my own image macro - for which, according to Anil Dash, the lettering has to be in a sans serif like Impact or Arial Black and has to be white surrounded by black. But I had no idea how to create an outline for letters in Photoshop.

A quick look through the ‘net got me to Photoshop911.com, which has a good explanation of how to do it.

Type text in a new layer - make sure you have it in the size and font you want before you start the rest
Select the letters (hold down command [Apple] or control [Windows] and click on the text layer)
Create a new layer (click on New Layer at the bottom of the layer palette)
Drag it below the text layer
Menu: Select > Modify > Expand
Type in the size of the outline you want (if you want it to be 2 pixels wide, type 2)
Fill with black (you can do this through Menu: Edit > Stroke)

And voilà. This technique worked for me.
Apparently, there exists a “Outline/Stroke layers” style which can do the same job, but may not be as efficient.

Topics: Tips, Photoshop |

9 Responses to “Photoshop tip: Adding an outline to letters”

Tony Walsh Says:
May 14th, 2007 at 7:39

The “Stroke” filter is a better solution, just an fyi It’s dynamic, so you can adjust the settings on the fly, unlike the “hard-coded” method you described, which worked great before Photoshop added dynamic filters. Happy pixel-painting!

sylvie Says:
May 14th, 2007 at 9:28

Yup, it works Pity it’s such an obscure command. Never would have guessed I needed to do that when I was poking around Photoshop to get outlines on my letters.

So for Photoshop 7.0:
Create a new layer for your typing (or start typing and it will create a new layer automatically)
Select font/size/colour
Menu: Layer > Layer Style > Stroke…
In the pop-up window, check Stroke; adjust the size of the border (3 pixels seems adequate); select the colour (remember, for a typical image macro, your font should be white, and your border black, but adjust for picture colour if necessary); position should be outside; blend mode normal; opacity 100%

Meghan Says:
August 30th, 2008 at 20:44

THANKS! It worked great.

Jesse Says:
February 1st, 2009 at 21:05

Thank you & I love you