#GIMP OUTLINE TEXT HOW TO#

This time adjust the number of pixels according to how thick you want the outline to be. Next, go to 'Invert' again, and then 'Shrink.' again. All we are doing here is making the outer edge of the outline slightly bigger than the outline of the base text, otherwise you can sometimes see a bit of the light colored text around the edge. It should already be set to 1 pixel, which is just fine. This will switch your selection from the letters to everything but the letters. Once you see that you have the outline selected, you'll want to go to 'Invert' in the Select menu. This uses that path we made to select the outline of the text. This is when you go to 'From Path' in the Select menu. Next you fill that top layer with whatever dark color you want the outline to be. This basically turns the outline of the text into a selection, but we don't actually have anything selected yet. Once you're happy with it, select all the text and go to 'Text to Path' under the Layers menu.

Do any changes in formatting now before you create the outline, the outline isn't text so you have to redo it if you change your mind. That's totally up to you, though.ДЇirst thing you do is write whatever you want in your light colored font. I like to throw a little bit of a gaussian blur on it to emphasize the text, and to keep sharp lines from looking weird when the thumbnail is very small. The last layer is of course the background. If you want the part of your thumbnail that you change often to be diagonal or warped, be sure to save a copy before you merge the layers. This is necessary for skewing or rotating text, but also makes it impossible to edit the text afterwards. The third layer is Another text layer that I merged with it's outline layer. Stay away from dark colors as the whole point of the outlined text is to maximize readability on any background. I use white, but any light color will work. The next one down is the actual text layer. If you select it and hit delete it clears the layer which is handy when you change the text.

The topmost one is the outline of the editable text. I always saw this used on Game Grumps, and decided I wanted to use that for my thumbnails to make them more readable. Light colored (white, specifically) text with a black outline. This first image shows the effect we're going for.

#GIMP OUTLINE TEXT HOW TO#

It took a while for me to figure out how to do this correctly, so here's a write up of how to do outlined text in Gimp.

Gimp outline text