3.6.5. Texttool

The Text tool places rendered text as a new selection. Prior to clicking on the image, the standard GTK font chooser will be displayed. The font that will be used for rendering can be selected from this dialog.

Activate Tool
  • The Text Tool can be called in the following order, from the image-menu: Tools/ Text .

  • The Tool can also be called by clicking the tool icon:

Key modifiers (Defaults)
t

The t key will change the active tool to the Text Tool.

Options

Overview

The available tool options for the Texttool can be accessed by double clicking the texttool icon.

Font

There are two ways of selecting fonts in the GIMP. The first is from the image Dialogs/Fonts menu. The second is with the Font selector in this tool. Both methods select from the installed X fonts.

Size

This control sets the size of the font in any of several selectable units.

Hinting

Uses the indices of adjustment to modify the characters in order to produce clear letters in small font sizes.

Force Auto-Hinter

Auto Hinter tries to automatically compute information for better representation of the character font.

Antialiasing

Antialiasing will render the text with much smoother edges and curves. This is achieved by slight blurring and merging of the edges. This option can radically improve the visual appearance of the rendered typeface. Caution should be exercised when using antialiasing on images that are not in RGB color space.

Color

Color of the text that will be drawn next. Defaults to black. Selectable from the color picker dialog box that opens when the current color sample is clickes.

Justify

Causes the text to be justified according to any of four rules selectable from the associated icons.

Indent

Controls the indent spacing from the left margin.

Line Spacing

Controls the spacing between successive lines of text.

Create Path from Text

This tool creates a selection path from the selected text.

Text Editor

Overview

GIMP text is maintained as an editable object. Clicking in an image's text area opens the text editor to allow editing of text previously placed on the image.

Load Text from File

Text can be loaded from a text file by clicking the folder icon in the text editor.

Clear all Text

Clicking this icon clears the editor and the associated text on the image.

From Left to Right

This option causes text to be entered from left to right, as is the case with most Western languages and may Eastern languages.

From Right to Left

This option allows text to be entered from right to left, as is the case with some Eastern languages, such as Arabic (illustrated in the icon).