Create beautiful word art to spice up your digital photos and art. One of my favorite things to do with type is to create word art. You can get really fancy with word art, but often something simple can be just as effective. I'll use this photo of a crocus to show you my favorite formula to create a simple but effective piece of word art. If you want to follow along, you'll find this image called crocus-bloom.jpg in your Part 7, lesson eight practice folder.

Step one is to find an appropriate quote. If you already have something in mind, that's great. Or if you're good at coming up with the title, go for it. If you're not sure what to say, check out the manual for how to search for quotes online. I'll use a quote I found online. It's one I've heard before, but it carries a great message. Wherever life plants you bloom with grace Let's turn this quote into word art.

Step two is to find one or two keywords you want to stand out. For this phrase, I'll choose the word "Bloom."

Step three is to choose two contrasting fonts that work well with your subject. One should be a standard font to use for the main quote, and the other should be a fancy font to use on the key word or words you chose in step two. My two favorite go-to regular fonts are Myriad Pro for smaller word art, and this happens to be married Pro, and Orator Standard Medium. For this project I'll use Orator Standard, which is available to download free on the internet.

For my second font, I'll choose my other current favorite, Calais. This happens to be a paid font, but you can find free fonts online that would also work for this quote. Check the manual for an example of a free font you could use instead. You have to be a little careful that your fancy font matches the mood of your subject. But that's not hard to do, because there are so many great fonts available.

Step four is to combine the fonts artistically. Let's go back to our image and do that. I'll get the Type tool. And we'll start with Orator standard Medium at a size of 14 points. And we'll use Center Alignment. And I'll type the first phrase, "Wherever life plants you," and click on the checkmark to commit the type. Now I'm ready to type my keyword with the fancy font. Here's a tip though when changing fonts. Click on your document with the Type tool to create a new type layer before changing the font. If you change the font first, it will simply change the font on the first type layer. So I'll click and then open Tool Options. And we'll change this to Calais. And now I can type my word "Bloom." I'll press the Ctrl key in Windows or the Command key on a Mac to get a Transform outline, and resize my word, and also click inside and move it over. Let's put it up a little ways up there. That's looking pretty good. Let's get it a little bit bigger, and then click on the checkmark to commit the change.

Sometimes all you have are two lines. But in this case, I have one additional line that needs to be the same font as the top line. Since I'm changing fonts, I only need to click to create a new text layer. Here's another type tip. When you have a large flowing word like the word Bloom, if you try to click near it to create a new text layer, the type tool often activate the large word, which I don't want. So I'll press Escape. And to start a new line of text, I can either move my cursor far enough away that it doesn't get snagged by the larger type, or I can use a nifty little trick. Press the Shift key as you click on your document. And that will tell Photoshop Elements that you want a new text layer. Once the layer is created, you can open Tool Options and change the font.

So we'll go back to Orator Standard Medium. And this time I'm going to type "With Grace," and I'll press the Ctrl key in Windows or the Command key on a Mac and just move that over a little bit. Right about there... and click on the checkmark.

Next I'd like to experiment changing the color of the word Bloom. So in the Layers panel, I'll click on the word Bloom. Click on the Foreground color chip to get the Color Picker and choose a new color or sample a color in the image. Let's try the orange and click OK. And that is a bit strong. So let's try the yellow color. I'll go ahead and click again. Click this time on the yellow, click OK. And that's not too bad. Let's try the white. And with this one, we'll try it. We'll click right here and click OK. And that looks really nice. It goes well with the flower. So I'm going to leave it the white color.

And the last thing I want to do is move this bottom line up a bit. So let's click on that and get the Move tool and use the arrow keys to move it up. And maybe over just a wee bit. About like that. And that looks good. I would like to move it a little bit, and to do that, I will press Shift and click on the bottom layer to select all three layers. And then I'll press the Ctrl key in Windows or the Command key on a Mac to disable Auto Select Layer so I can click anywhere and drag to move... and we'll bring that down just a little bit like that. And now it is done.

That's one simple way to create inspiring word art.