Simple Photoshop Question: Offsetting Artwork

[jasonbar]

Hi-

I'm banging my head against my PhotoShop Elements 2.0. (Don't laugh--I know it's old & weak, but it works fine for me!)

Forgive my terminology also--I'm sure I'm using improper vocabulary...


I have a piece of artwork that consists of continuous hollow line segments of decent width.

To accomplish what I'm looking for, I want to *either* "grow" the art out or "shrink" it in. If I can accomplish either task, I can get what I want for my art.


I'll attach a couple of faked examples to illustrate:

1 - Let's say my artwork is the black ring. I want to add pixels of a given color (not black) inward, in an even weighting, to make an inner green outline.

2 - 1 - Let's say my artwork is the black ring. I want to add pixels of a given color (not black) outward, in an even weighting, to make an outer green outline.



I'm sure this must be simple, but I'm not finding out how to do this...  

Thanks,
-Jason

[Le Chuck]

Search the help document for "stroke"

If elements has it that's your best bet.  You can do an inner stroke (HA!... sorry) or an outer stroke (*snicker...) of a definite value that will follow the contour of you layer.  Want both, duplicate your layer and do one inner and one outer.  You can pick color, density, thickness, all kinds of stuff. 

In PS proper it's a layer effect (double click on the layer to access the menu)  In elements no-I-deer. 

Be careful if you google "how to stroke" but you may need to if the Elements F1 search yields no stroke.

----

Ah hell, I googled it and got some weird pics but also came across this.  Should get you on the right path.  http://www.betterphoto.com/article.asp?id=120

[jasonbar]

Thank you!!!

That worked! Actually, it required a little cleanup afterward, but that was easy. I chose the "outside" option & it made a perimeter that followed both the inside & outside of my art. Fortunately, the outside looked good & the inside just needed a few fills & brush strokes to clean up.

Thanks!
-Jason

[Le Chuck]

The inner outline of your layer must have been out of true then.  Stroke only multiplies or grows the outer layers of pixels on a raster image.  Outside stroke does so distally to the outer layer and inside stroke does so proximaly.  If it's a basic shape you're working with I recommend you build in vector so you don't have to clean up fuzzy magnified edges later on.  Once you get everything set then rastorize for a nice clean look, or learn illustrator and get your vector on.

[jasonbar]

I'm so not professional & slick & efficient...

1 - I found a font I liked that made outline text. I typed up my text in Word, laboriously changing the spacing between each pair of characters to get it just right. (Oh, that was only 10 spaces--not too bad...) 2 lines of separate text, b/c I couldn't get the between-lines spacing as close as I wanted.

2 - I made it as big as I could on my screen. I took a screen grab. I pasted a layer into PS. Repeat for the 2nd line of text.

3 - I scooched both layers until they were spaced juuuuuust right.

4 - Because the 2 layers of text art (now pixels) were somewhat overlapping/touching, I had to flatten the image before doing the Stroke command, so each layer's new outside perimeter wouldn't overlap the other layer.

5 - As I recall, Stroke was dimmed & unselectable after flatttening unless I did a magic wand select of the art to Stroke. Perhaps that's why it Stroked inward as well as outward...


Alas, I don't have Illustrator anymore. No biggie--this artwork will be rather small when printed, so I think I'll be good.


Thanks again!
-Jason

[Le Chuck]

Glad you got everything working.  Sounds like you had to take the long way around.  Next time try inserting the text using the text function within your graphics editor of choice.  I found a tutorial on elements here that doesn't do exactly what you want but does get you familar with the tool.  You will be able to adjust individual letter width, height, and spacing much more easily from elements than cross importing. 

Depending on what you brought with the text when you imported it the flattening merge would have made all text part of the layer behind it so that's why you had to individually lasso each letter.  What you describe as inside and outside is really just outside.  The computer doesn't see the spaces within letters as "inside" it sees the black body of the letter itself as inside.  When you originally asked the question I assumed that you were working with a solid shape because I clearly don't take the time to read carefully where you said ring. 

Elements is a good tool that you can really do a lot with and it comes with a good tutorial set too if I remember correctly.  Working through those tutorials or just browsing them will really open the program up for you.  Can't wait to see the art when it's ready to announce!

[jasonbar]

Thanks again for the help & guidance!

-Jason

[Le Chuck]

You gots mail.