text background colour

Talk about Pixelmator Pro, share tips & tricks, tutorials, and other resources.
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2022-02-17 09:27:55

Is there any way of having a background colour for text blocks? (I mean apart from creating a coloured 'box' under the text. (I'm annotating a document with numerous text blocks and so doing this individually would be verrryyy time-consuming.)
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2022-02-17 10:51:55

I don´t see an option for Text to achieve this inside Pixelmator Pro - but Preview.app can do for instance and I guess Pages.app as well. Just saying.
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2022-02-17 14:05:58

Yeah, there isn't a way to do this at the moment – I'm not sure it would make too much sense to make every text box have a background, but maybe we can add a "text box with background" layer type? This definitely needs some thinking, but we do see the use of a feature like this. :raised_hands:
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2022-02-17 15:53:59

by Andrius 2022-02-17 14:05:58 Yeah, there isn't a way to do this at the moment – I'm not sure it would make too much sense to make every text box have a background, ... :raised_hands:
Thanks for your reply. This is a very common requirement for diagram 'callouts' (which I was considering doing in Pixelmator Pro). I realise, however, that it may be more vector-illustration-app functionality than for Pixelmator.
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2022-12-03 14:28:13

Not sure this is the right thread... But I'm hoping for a font or text outline that you can see a sample in the linked file https://filer.jfsolvberg.no/Outline-Request.png
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2022-12-03 18:59:57

by Sølvberg Not sure this is the right thread... But I'm hoping for a font or text outline that you can see a sample in the linked file https://filer.jfsolvberg.no/Outline-Request.png
I thought we could do that - Nope. In this Pix Pro text image I had two stokes I hoped the second would round - Nope. A dedicated artistic text application handled it with a single stroke. ( I could have made it look more like yours I think, with a little more effort, and time wasting.) What app did you use?
Image
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2022-12-03 20:13:13

I used Skitch. A very simplistic app, and can only do straight text, not angle it or drag it out etc.

I use pixelmator mostly for ads, Youtube tumbnails, and such. Mostly bastardize images with text to send a message. And Text on image is often difficult to stand out readable.

I would love Pixelmator to do this kind of things...
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2022-12-03 21:41:14

I don´t see any difficulties to achieve these effects either with editable Text or converted text-to-shape:
Image
The spikes in your "Added outlining in PixPro" is caused by double nodes in the same spot and Font-related issues which will appear in other apps as well.
PS.: I thought Skitch is replaced by Capto long ago.
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2022-12-04 09:12:18

Thank you for responding. This is the thing I'm looking for. I was hoping it would be a one click solution like the outline function. I think they could add functionality to the outline function, by adding possibility to chose color for the font (where it's transparant), and adjust the thikness and color of the stroke. That would do it, I believe.

But, in the meantime, do you mind elaborate on the process?

I'm using Pixelmator to put text or shapes on images to convey a message, in ads or illustrations. A Photographer might say I bastaradize images with text, but this is the way things has gone (ref. Youtube tumbnails, Facebook ads, etc). Often I take screenshots and need to put arrows and text to explain things.

Skitch exist under the Evernote umbrella, not sure for how long, though. The reason for looking for something else than Skitch, is that it's simple and you can't angle the text, only horisontal and it's not very precise. Capto I haven't heard about. I'll check it out...

But I really thought a photo app should be able to handle this sort of things. I have no idea whether it is easy to program, but both Word and Pages have similar features. But they are not that good at photoshopping.
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2022-12-04 10:37:46

by Sølvberg
But, in the meantime, do you mind elaborate on the process?
Write Text - go Style and adjust Fill->Color, Stroke->Color and placement= Outside and Shadow. Text will be editable.
Just when you really need the rounded thick outline you´ll need to convert to shape - and it will just work this way, because Pixelmator Pro neither support sharp edges nor miter limits in it´s vector tool set - yet - so all edges are rounded by default.

(Skitch and Capto seems to use the same resources in macOS guts as I´m forced to integrate/add/replace its lib when I switched to Capto, because it can do screen-video I often need for annotated tutorials. That´s why I thought it´d be from the same devs. Skitch hasn´t been updated since 2020)