How to rasterize text in photopea

Designers often need to place several copies of the same object into the document (e.g. when you want to add multiple snowflakes on the sky). It can be done by creating the first object and then duplicating it (and moving copies to the right place).

There is a disadvantage in such approach. When you need to modify the object, you will need to modify each copy of the object separately.

Single Source

PSD format offers a better solution for dealing with many copies of the same object. The single source of the image data is created in the background (e.g. the PNG image of the snowflake), and each snowflake layer is linked to this single source. Once the source is changed, all layers, that are linked to it, are automatically updated. Such layers are called Smart Objects. A Smart Object is a type of a layer.

Smart Objects may be linked to the same source, but they don't have to look completely the same. Smart Objects can have different positions and transformations (rotation, scale etc.). And since they are different layers, they can have different opacity and the layer style.

Smart Objects have another advantage. When you have a regular layer, 100 x 100 pixels, and you scale it down to 10 x 10 pixels, and then back to 100 x 100 pixels, some image information will be lost. The Smart Object would have the image information (100 x 100 px image) stored in the background, so after scaling it down and up again, the new image can be recalculated from the source, which never lost any data. It allows us to do nondestructive editing.

Working with smart objects

You can convert any layer (or several layers) to a Smart Object by selecting them and right-click - Convert to Smart Object. Selected layers will be removed and inserted into a new PSD file, which will become the source of a new Smart Object, that will be added to the document.

Smart Object layers have a little sign in the bottom-right corner of the thumbnail.

Double-click the thumbnail of the smart object to edit its source. It will be opened as a separate document. When you finish editing the source, press File - Save. All Smart Objects, that are linked to that source, will be updated in the original document. Duplicating the smart object would create new Smart Objects, that are still linked to the same source.

Let's return to our initial case. We can solve it by drawing a snowflake and converting it to the Smart Object. Then, we can duplicate that Smart Object and move copies to different places on the sky. Once we need to change the snowflake, we simply double-click any thumbnail of a snowflake, change the source and save it. All snowflakes will be updated.

Smart Filters can be applied to a smart object.

There are two kinds of style parameters: Character Style (e.g. text size, color, ...), which can be different for each character, and Paragraph Style (e.g. text aligning, margin etc.), which is shared by the whole paragraph.

Character properties can be found in the Character panel (Window - Character), while Paragraph properties can be found in the Paragraph panel (Window - Paragraph). Some basic Character and Paragraph properties can be found also in the top menu of a Type tool.

When the type layer is selected (in the Layers panel), you can change the style (e.g. the font family or aligning) of the whole layer. Another option is to enter the layer and select a specific part of the text. As you change the style, it will be applied only to the selected part of the text.

Align

Aligning of a Paragraph text layer is computed with respect to the sides of the rectangle. Aligning of a Point text layer is computed according to the point of origin. Below, we can see a Point and a Paragraph text with the same three paragraphs. The first paragraph is aligned to the left, the second is aligned to the right, and the third is aligned to the center.

Writing directions

When you use e.g. latin and arabic words in the same text, they direction of writing is detected automatically, just as in any other text editor. But there is so-called base direction, which is necessary for the correct rendering of bidirectional text and punctuations. You can change the base direction in the Paragraph window.

Custom fonts

Photopea has a huge database of royalty-free fonts. If you know any free font, it is probably already available in PP.

For all other fonts, Photopea allows you to open them (TTF or OTF files) the same way you open any other file (File - Open, or drag-and-drop). They will be added to the end of the font list and used, when some type layer needs them.

Sometimes, we may have a raster image (JPG, PNG ...), which used to be a vector image. The original vector image can be recreated by hand, but it may take a lot of time. Photopea can do it automatically, it is called bitmap vectorization or bitmap tracing.

After we open our raster image (or select the right layer in a layered image), press Image - Vectorize Bitmap. We will see a special Vectorizer window.

We can see the original image on the left and the vector image on the right. We can move both images with a mouse, or zoom in / out with a mouse wheel. We can also set two parameters:

• Number of colors
• Noise reduction

Putting text into images is an essential operation of image editing. Photopea offers a rich set of tools for working with text. Text is stored in PSD documents inside Type Layers, which have a thumbnail with a capital letter T on it.

There are three kinds of Type layers:

• Point text - defined by the point of origin. The text starts at that point and continues on a single line until the line break (Enter).
• Paragraph text - defined by the rectangle. Paragraphs are broken automatically into multiple lines to fill the rectangle.
• Text on a curve - defined by a curve, letters are arranged along the curve.

Creating a Type layer

The Type tool is used for working with Type layers:

To create a Point text, choose a Type tool and click (press and release) the mouse at some place, which will become the origin.

To create a Paragraph text, press the mouse and drag it to draw a rectangle, then release the mouse. After creating the new Type layer, you can start typing.

If you click inside a path, the rectangle will be made around that path, and the text will be constrained by a curve of that path.

To create a text on a curve, select a curve first (in Paths panel, or a shape layer / vector mask), and click on its contour.

There will be two new symbols (points) on a curve: An X symbol and an O symbol. The text is placed between them. Use the Path Select tool to move these points, or to switch text rendering to the opposite side of the curve.

Editing a Type layer

There are two important actions when editing type layers: Entering the layer and Escaping the layer. To Enter a type layer, just click on it with a Type tool (newly created layers are entered automatically). After entering the layer, the environment is locked and you can edit the layer (and nothing else). To do something else (e.g. edit another type layer), you must escape the current layer first.

To escape the type layer, you must confirm or cancel your changes using buttons in the top menu. Escaping and canceling changes is also possible with the Escape key on the keyboard.

When you have entered a type layer, many ways of editing are possible. You can select any text with a mouse, delete it, add a new text, copy and paste etc. When it is a Paragraph text, you can also change the size of the rectangle by moving its corners. You can move the mouse outside the text, press and drag it, to move the type layer.