Cheap Circular Text

One of the most frequently asked questions in the Photoshop newsgroups is how to put text on a circle or a path. Well, until Adobe *hopefully* adds this feature, we have to improvise. This is the quick, ugly way to make circular text.

1. Make a new canvas the size you want the diameter of the circle to be. Then use the text tool and make the text as wide as the canvas. If you are in PS5, you will have to Render the text. Also, make sure 'Preserve Transparency' is not checked on the text layer.

Place the text at the bottom of the canvas to get a wide circle. The higher on the canvas the text is, the tighter the circle will be.

2. Filter>Distort>Polar Coordinates. Choose Rectangular to Polar and click OK.

OK it's ugly and distorted, but maybe you go for that sort of thing. If you want to manually rotate each letter along a path, then you probably have more patience than I do.

Back to Tutorials
Back to Home