Double-outlined & Overlapping Letters
Festive Lettering to Celebrate Cinco de Mayo

Before starting, please read this popup preface...notes about tutorial format, etc.

With this tutorial we'll be creating some festive lettering with bright Mexican colors and a double outline. Each letter will be outlined with a contrasting color and then we'll overlap the letters and outline the whole word with a second color. In other words, the outline is outlined. Additional embellishments will be added to dress up each letter. Today's example celebrates Cinco de Mayo with traditional Mexican colors and a red banner background.

Copy this color swatch if you want to use the colors shown in the above image.

Of course, double-outlined overlapping letters could be used for any message, header or banner, not just for 'Cinco de Mayo'!    Another example is below.

A double outline usually looks best when using large, fat, block style letters. Possible fonts are Tristan, Pythagoras or Arial Black. El Rio Lobo would work good too, it has a great Spanish flair and also has it's own 'built-in' embellishment.

This tutorial was written for Paint Shop Pro version X and is suitable for beginner to advanced beginner. You should be familiar enough with Paint Shop Pro to know where to find the basic commands and tools. We'll be using some vector tools, which is usually considered advanced, however, there isn't any node editing involved in this project. Don't let the word 'vector' scare you away!

You can get a demo of PSP X from Corel.com. Nearly any version of PSP that has vector tools could be used, however, name and location of tools/commands will be slightly different.

This particular lettering was inspired by a combination of some cartoon lettering and a Mexican food packaging label I saw a while back. I encourage you to look around at packaging for ideas and inspiration for your own 'creative lettering'. Just don't make exact copies or you might infringe on copyrights or trademarks. Put your own spin on it by using different colors, different fonts, etc.

Start with basic outlined text

Create a new image. Your choice for canvas size ...make it large. You'll probably want to start with a canvas that is at least 500 pixels by 300 pixels. Your choice for raster background or transparent vector background. We'll be creating our text using vector tools and PSP will automatically create a new vector layer when you start with a raster background.

Today's example uses a font called 'Pythagoras', typed in all caps. Using your own choice of font, enter the text in the center.
Text tool settings: Size=72 pixels, Anti-alias=Smooth, Stroke width=3, Create as Vector, Line style=Solid.

If you are creating larger or smaller size text, adjust the stroke width accordingly.

Stoke color is dark yellow #3 from color swatch. Fill color is pale yellow #1.

Using the Gradient Editor to create a custom gradient

Let's change the fill color in our text to a 3-color gradient that we'll create with the 'Gradient Editor'. Start with the same stroke and fill colors previously set. With the Pick tool, select all your words (hold down Shift key to select more than one). Click on the fill swatch in the Materials palette to bring up the dialog box.

In the Material Properties dialog, select the Gradient tab and set Style to 'Linear' with 'Angle' & 'Repeats' set to 0 (Invert & Texture unchecked).

Next, click the EDIT button in the dialog box.

Clicking Edit in the Material Properties dialog opens the Gradient Editor. This is where we can edit an existing gradient to make a new one.

At the top of the Gradient Editor is a list of installed gradient types. Below that are 3 boxes...Fore, Back and Custom. The colors of these buttons are shown in the adjacent color bar. The Transparency bar is below that. When you make changes on these 2 color bars, the resulting gradient is shown in the bottom bar. Buttons to save a custom-made gradient are located at top right (along with Rename, Import, etc).

Choose Foreground-Background from list of gradient 'Types'. The Gradient bar displays the 2 colors that we've already selected. The transition midpoint between the 2 colors is indicated by a small diamond along the top of the color bar. Markers indicate points of solid color (they are located along the bottom of the color bar and look like a short felt-tip marker).

Add a 3rd color to the center of the gradient by adding a Marker. Click below the color bar...halfway between the other 2 Markers...a 3rd Marker will appear. A 2nd midpoint indicator will also appear (along the top).

Note that the 'selected' Marker has a darker point than the others.

With the center Marker selected, click the 'Custom' button that is under the word 'Gradient'. Click the Color Picker next to the 'Custom' button. Cursor will change to Eyedropper and Materials palette will open so you can select another color. Select bright yellow #2 from color swatch and OK.

You should now have 3 colors in your gradient: dark yellow on left, bright yellow in middle and pale yellow on right.

I would like to see a bit more of the pale yellow in our gradient and a little less of the dark yellow. To do that, all we need to do is slide the center Marker to the left. As you drag, you'll see the 'Location' number change. Drag it until the 'Location' box says 25%. Now the majority of the gradient is the pale yellow and bright yellow with just a small portion in dark yellow.

We don't want to accidentally overwrite the foreground-background gradient, so we must save as a new gradient. Click the 'Save As' button and give your gradient a name. Name it whatever you like. I named mine 'sunshine'. Close the Gradient Editor. Click OK to close the Materials dialog. We now have a warm and sunny gradient filling our letters.

Note: The PSP X Help file will tell you to save a custom gradient by selecting the 'Copy' button in the Gradient Editor. This is an error, there is no 'Copy' button.

Changing Outline Color and Overlapping Letters

The next step is to change the outline color from the yellow we used in the gradient to something more contrasting. With all words selected and the Pick tool active, select the Properties icon on the Tool Options palette to bring up the Vector Property dialog. Now we can change the outline/stroke color to green. Note that you can also change the stroke width in this dialog if you feel the outline is too thin/too fat.

Next we'll mix up the alignment of the letters to give it a more festive look (this is optional, of course). Before we can re-arrange individual letters, we have to convert them to separate shapes. With the Pick tool, select text, right click, select 'Convert Text to Curves > As Character Shapes'. If you have more than one line of text, this has to be done to each line separately unless both lines were created at the same time (as one object). If you entered text one word at a time, then you have to convert to character shapes one word at a time.

Once text is converted, select each letter (one at a time - see note**) to move them closer together. Arrange letters so they are slightly overlapping each other. Rotate some of the letters left and some right using the rotate handle on the bounding box of selected letter. I also made the C and M appear as 'capital' letters by dragging a corner point of the bounding box until they were slightly larger than the other letters. Refer to above image. In screenshot above, the Grid Guideline is turned on to assist in aligning each letter and centering the second line under the first.

**Note: The easiest way to select just one letter/character shape is to select it from the Layer palette. Click the + next to the layer button to reveal the sub-layers and click a layer button to select a letter. The text of the layer name will become bold when selected and a bounding box will appear around the selected letter.

You'll notice the letters/character shapes are arranged on the Layer palette in reverse, with the last letter typed as the uppermost sub-layer. When you overlap your letters, this arrangement will cause the letters to overlap right to left. Overlapping letters seem to look best when they overlap left to right (probably because we read left to right). To have the letters overlap left to right means the first letter needs to be the uppermost layer. To reverse the palette arrangement, drag each letter button on the Layer palette until the letter order is switched. In other words, to have letters overlapping left to right, 'Cinco de Mayo' should be spelled out top to bottom on Layer palette.

Adding a second outline around words

Now we'll add the 2nd outline. This outline will wrap around the whole word, not individual letters. Finalize the position, rotation and alignment of all letters before proceeding.

Select the primary layer on Layer palette for 'Cinco de Mayo'. It is probably named 'Vector 1' unless you've re-named it. Right click this layer button and select 'Duplicate'.

Change the - to a + to fold up and hide all sub-layers for 'Copy of Vector 1'. This makes for less 'visual clutter'.

Switch to 'Vector 1' (the bottom vector layer) and select the layer button(s) for all of the 'Cinco de Mayo' text. We only want the bottom layer text selected...be careful not to select any of the top layer. This is the reason I suggest you make your selections from the Layer palette instead of clicking directly on the letters or dragging a selection around them.

With all letters on bottom layer ('Vector 1') selected and the Pick tool active. Select the Properties icon on the Tool Options palette to bring up the Vector Property dialog. Change the outline/stroke color to dark blue (from color swatch) and change the stroke width to 7. Click OK to close. If you are working with a different size font or stroke than this demo, enter a number that is double the width used in the first outline.

Your lettering should now have a green outline around the yellow gradient and a blue outline around just the 'outside' portions of the lettering (as shown in image above). You could stop at this point, convert to raster and add some drop shadows...but we're going to embellish the letters a bit more.

Add some festive embellishments

Before proceeding...'Select None'.

If you want to embellish your letters with the orange triangles used in the image above, create a new vector layer at top of all others.

Using Preset Shapes, draw a small triangle on new layer. Use orange (#4 on swatch) for fill color (no stroke color).

From Tools, select 'Preset Shape'. On Tool Options palette, select 'Triangle' from drop down list of shapes. Un-check 'Retain style'. Check 'Create as Vector' and 'Anti-alias'. Line style is solid.

With the Pick tool, select the triangle, right click and select 'Copy'. Right click again, select 'Paste New Vector Selection'...twice. Zoom in. Line up the 3 triangles in a row with base points touching.

Select all 3 triangles, right click, select 'Group'.

From Image menu, select 'Free Rotate'. Direction: Right, Degrees: 90 and un-check 'All layers'. Use the points on the bounding box to resize the group of triangles so they will fit inside your letters (refer to above image). Zoom in as needed and place triangles over one of the letters to gauge size. Once the size is OK, right click and 'Copy'. Right click to 'Paste New Vector Selection' off to one side to save as an unchanged 'original'. You can also use Ctrl C to copy and Ctrl G to paste vector selection.

Now paste (Ctrl G) a copy of the triangle group on the left side of each and every letter. If you need to start over and copy/paste triangles again...remember you have the 'spare' copy sitting off to one side. Some of the letters will not have a perfectly vertical 'leg' and the triangles won't fit well without a little adjusting. We'll fix the fit next, but for now just get them all pasted in.

After there's a copy of the triangles inserted for each letter, go back thru your message and select each triangle group with Pick tool, as needed, to align/rotate until it fits in left 'leg' of letter. See above image for example. For round letters (C and O), right click the triangles and select 'Un-Group'. Now you can rotate each triangle separately to fit the curve.

For the words, font and arrangement I am using, a problem occurs where some of the letters overlap. Portions of the orange triangles land on top of the green outline. This may or may not happen with other fonts and messages. Because PSP won't let us fit the triangle embellishment between our letter shapes (as letters are currently designed), the workaround is to cover up or erase the problem. You could use the Pen tool to draw some small green vector lines covering the triangles that should be hidden by the green of the overlapping letter....or, simply erase those triangles after converting to raster (which is next step).

Erase Portions of Triangles and Add a Drop Shadow

Right click each layer on Layer palette and select 'Convert to Raster Layer'.

Before attempting to erase the unwanted portions of orange triangles, select the layer with the green outline and use Magic Wand to select just the green outline. Switch back to layer with orange triangles and, with Eraser tool, erase portions of triangles that are suppose to be hidden by overlapping letters. The selection made with Magic Wand will help you stay 'in the lines'.

Select 'none'. Erase any stray bits of orange that may have been left behind. At this point you can also erase the 'extra' group of 3 triangles that was set aside 'just in case' they were needed.

Zoom back to normal size.

Merge visible and add a drop shadow. First, hide visibility for raster background (if there is one) so it won't be included in merge. Then select text layer, right click, select 'Merge > Merge visible'. (You can turn visibility for background back on now.)

Add Banner Background and Save

Next we'll add a background banner. Which, again, is an optional addition. Create a new raster layer below the text/shadow layer.

Use red from color swatch as fill and yellow #2 for outline/stroke. Outline width 3. Using Preset shapes tool, draw a rectangle behind letters (uncheck vector and uncheck anti-alias).

Create another raster layer below the red rectangle layer for a second border. Select the area around the red banner with Magic Wand (anti-alias unchecked, no feather) and then invert. Selections > Invert

Enlarge the selection. Selections > Modify > Expand by 3 pixels.

On the new layer, below the red rectangle, flood fill the selection with green from the color swatch. Merge visible. Remember, if you don't want background merged with image, hide visibility for background layer before merging visible layers.

Add a drop shadow for the banner. Use same settings as before except this time check the box that says 'Shadow on new layer'.

Optional: Add a 2nd drop shadow for the banner that is more of a green 'glow'. Make sure background banner is the active layer before adding the 2nd shadow effect.

Crop your canvas size down to include only the message area. Export as optimized GIF or PNG, with or without transparent background.

¡Happy Cinco de Mayo!

The above text was created the same way as 'Cinco de Mayo'. The font is the same and the technique is the same...just different colors were used. The word 'thanks' has a blue and green gradient fill (foreground-background gradient) and the white outline is slightly wider. The black outline, however, is quite a bit wider. I also moved the black outline layer a little bit to the left to offset it from the other letters slightly. A 'normal' drop shadow was also added.

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