Text Cutout on Photos in PaintShop Pro

Have you ever wanted to give your photos a unique touch by adding eye-catching text cutouts? It's a fun and surprisingly easy way to add personalized titles, phrases, dates, or even locations directly into your images. Let's dive into how you can achieve this stylish effect with PaintShop Pro!

Pick your photo

The first step is to pick a photo that will yield a good result. Not every photo is suitable for this type of effect. You want to use a photo that has a fairly plain area where you want to add your text. If the area is busy, the text will be harder to read.

I will be using this photo:

Before working with the photo, make sure you are working on a duplicate of it. This is the biggest advantage of digital work: you will never have to alter an original photo? Also, if your photo is a background layer, promote it. That is essential if you want to cut it out and have some transparency.

Add your text

Select the Text tool and choose your desired font. Type your phrase or word—something like "ENJOYING THE MOMENT" works perfectly. You will get better results if you use all uppercase text because the height of the characters is usually more even than with lowercase.

Since text is created as a vector, you can resize it without getting any pixellated edges. Stretch your text box so it neatly touches the edges where you want your cutout to appear. Ideal placement is in areas with minimal detail, like skies, walls, or open spaces, to avoid cutting into your main subjects.

You don't have to have the text using the whole width of your photo. You can limit your text to only a section instead. That is up to you.

Create a selection

With your text still in vector form, go to Selection > From Vector Object. This creates a precise selection around your text.

This section is what you want to keep. Of course, you ALSO want to keep the photo, don't you? With the Selection tool set to Add mode (or holding the Shift key), select the photo area, from the bottom, to the bottom edge of the text (you can add a few pixels for good measure).

Invert that selection

Once you have selected all the sections that you want to KEEP, it is time to invert that selection. You can do it with Selection > Invert, or the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-Shift-i. Then, hit the DELETE key and it will reveal the checkerboard indicating a transparent section.

Of course, at this point, you still have the text that hides your photo. You can now hide or even delete the text layer. You don't need it anymore.

And Deselect (Ctrl-D).

Show off your cutout

On its own, this cutout might or might not be easy to read, depending on the photo, but once you place it on a contrasting paper, it should show much better.

By adding a drop shadow, it will enhance the edges of your text, making it easier to read.

Additional tweak

If you find that the text is still a bit hard to read, you can make a rectangular selection to include the whole text, and adjust the Brightness. Don't go too wild; you still want to see the details of the photo.

Extra tips

Always choose a photo with sufficient blank space.
Uppercase letters and simple fonts create a cleaner edge. Bold fonts will also work better.
Some fonts, even with uppercase, might have uneven characters. Be mindful of that.
Be mindful of placing your text so it doesn't cut into critical areas of the image.
If you want to use a busy area, you can adjust that area before cutting into it by adjusting the brightness or add some blur.

Using text cutouts is an easy yet powerful way to create dynamic and personalized images. Whether you’re creating memories for your scrapbook, designing invitations, or simply enhancing a social media post, this technique will add a creative flair to your photos. Try it yourself and see how fun and easy it is to elevate your images with text!

This tutorial is an excerpt from the guidebook that accompanies the Cutout Master class, available inside our DIAMOND membership. Join now, and you can access more than 100 classes on various topics using PaintShop Pro.