Curving Text

[rjbearcan]

Does anyone know how I can curve text? I have a line that I can use as a guide but I haven't had any luck snapping the text to it, it just doesn't look right.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

[Frequent]

Well, you can always do it the hard way by creating each letter as it's own image and placing them by hand...

Yuck!

Freq---

[rjbearcan]

How do you tie a noose? You would think there would be an easier way to do this.

[Frequent]

The problem lies here:

"it just doesn't look right"

You obviously want it to look a very specific way.

The functions of graphics programs operate within set tolerances that are acceptable to most users. When the "easy" built in functions don't give you exactly what you want then you can either accept it and take what you have available easily, or do it the hard way.

The hard way can be manually (as I mentioned above) or by trying a dozen or more other graphics programs, none of which may give you an acceptable result. Since there are only so many free graphics programs... it's probably quicker and cheaper to do it manually.

Think of it as the difference between being a graphic artist and a graphic software user.

Freq---

[rjbearcan]

What I have done is go into Freehand, align the text to the path that I need, then take the png file into Flash and rotate the text over top of the png. It's slow but at least it's coming out the way I want it to.

[Frequent]

Good to hear rjbearcan!

Being picky is not a bad thing. It's well worth the trouble to have things exactly the way you want them.

Freq---

[whoisgregg]

You can also take the text in freehand, convert it to paths, then drag it into your flash movie.

Next, you can use actionscript to break a string into individual characters and place them (algorithmically) on an arc. There are sample scripts to do this at the "flash actionscript samples" sites. Problems you'll run into include the kerning between letters will never look "right."