Before you share your favorite photos with family and friends why not give them some extra pizzazz? You can add a funny comment, some descriptive text, or even add a photo border for more visual appeal.
We’ll show you how to do this, step by step and we’ll do it using the free program Paint.net which can be downloaded from http://www2.e-thisisit.com/paint.zip. In Issue 1 we explained how to download and install this program. Now let’s see how to use it to add text and a border to a photo.
Open the photo to work with in Paint.net. Choose File > Save As and give the photo a new and different name – this ensures you don’t damage your original photo.
To add a border to the photo select the Rectangle Select Tool and drag just inside the edge of the image to create a large rectangle. Now choose Edit > Invert Selection to select the border area outside the rectangle you just made.
Click the Paint Bucket tool. On the toolbar at the top of the screen set the Fill: to Solid Color and set the Tolerance: to 100%.
If the Colors dialog isn’t visible, choose Window > Colors to display it. Set the Foreground color to the color to use for your frame. Now click inside the border area and the paint bucket tool will fill it with the selected color.
When you are done choose Edit > Deselect to deselect the selection so you can see the image as it will look when you save it.
To add text to your image click the Text tool (it has the letter ‘T’ on it) in the Tools palette. Click on the photo and then type your text.
At the top of the screen the toolbar shows the current font and font size. Once the text is typed, select a different font from the list, if desired. You can also choose a different sized text from the box to the right of the font list. From the Colors dialog set the foreground color to the color to use for the text.
Notice that just below and to the right of the text is a crosshair icon. Click and drag this to move the text into position. Only when you are happy with everything about the text should you select another tool. When you do this the text will be permanently embedded in the photo so you can’t change it.
Often photos look best when the border color is a color which is in the photo itself. You can set the foreground color to a color from the image by first making sure the Colors panel is visible. Now click the Color Picker icon in the Tools palette (it looks like an eyedropper) and hover your mouse over a color in the image. Click once to sample it. Now you can fill the border with that color using the Paint Bucket tool.
