Before those way cool Brother label printer gadgets came along, and way before PC's and jet printers, we used plastic Dymo labels to tag our stuff. Remember how much fun those label guns were to play with? I sure do! Plus, those labels could be handier than shirt pockets for keeping track of what's what and what's where!
Perhaps you've noticed the "all things Retro" comeback has now included Dymo labels. You can never tell when you'll come across a slice of text done up in label style. How do they do that? To be honest, I don't know how they did it, but I know a way it can be done using PSP! Actually, there are two ways, a really easy way, and a not quite as simple way. Naturally, we'll start with the not as easy way!
There is a font I found out there in free font land (that's not a specific site by the way, just what I call the free font places!) that just screamed out "Dymo labels!" to me: it's called Chromosome Light.
See what I mean? Looks awfully close to the real thing doesn't it? Well, here it is at 48 points on a 300X75 image with a black background.
DESELECT the text, Copy the whole image and Paste it as a New Image.
On the copy, apply the Dilate filter (Image-Special Filters) three times.
We need to re-select our text on the original. Simply Select All, then go to Modify on the Select menu, change the Transparent Color to Black, and your text is now selected. Wasn't that easy? Copy the text to the clipboard and Paste it onto your Dilated image. Now Invert your selection and apply a Hot Wax Coating. Next apply the Despeckle filter from the Special Filters menu (the same place where you found Dilate). This will get rid of pesky bright white spots while not totally killing off the white. If necessary, * re-select your pasted text and use Color-Adjust-Brightness/Contrast to brighten it up. It should look like this:
Not too bad. You can mutilate this guy real easily and make it look like someone's been picking at a corner. I just "scratched" on it with a thin Airbrush line in white.
But you know the world isn't restricted to using black Dymo labels. You can make labels in other colors with this technique too, but you have to make some minor changes.
Pick your background color and write your text. You will still need to copy your initial image, but this time Dilate it only twice. Then Re-select the text in your original, but this time, Invert your selection and apply the Hot Wax Coating. You want a small dark border around your text so MAKE SURE the selection is inverted (you WILL know if you made a boo-boo!)!
Now Invert your selection, then go to Select-Modify and choose Feather. Set your feather to 4 and now copy your text to the clipboard. Paste the text onto the Dilated image. And there you have it!
By enlarging the selection before you copy, you'll bring in just enough of the Wax edge to add definition and dimension to the text. In my experimentation, a feather of 4 looks the most realistic. Lower feather settings just don't add enough depth to the text. Also, you waxed the original text because waxing the dilated text leaves it with a big dark border, and when the label gun impresses the plastic, it turns white. Since we're not waxing the dilated text, we didn't dilate it as much as we did for our black label.
What if you can't find the font Chromosome Light: can you do this technique with any other fonts? Sure you can! Obviously the label gun effect calls for a skinny font, preferably a light one, but a bold one can work too. In fact here is an example using Arial Rounded MT Bold:
I made this using the same steps above, with the only difference being that I Eroded the original text before I copied it. Here's one in blue:
Again, I used the same steps for colored labels. For the record, I waxed the inverted selection before Eroding the text in the original, and Eroded the selection before copying it. Long as nobody gets hurt, it's alright! One obvious boon of using other fonts is the availability of Lower Case letters and more Punctuation marks. You may need to take into consideration text spacing. Chromosome Light is spaced just right to match the label gun's output. With other fonts you may have to write your text one letter at a time to get the spacing right. Type it all out like normal first and see if that works. If it works for you, or something else works better, let me know!
Did I say something about there being a real easy way to do this? Oh yeah, there is an easier way. In fact, you can download and install a FONT called Punch Label! Here's what it looks like:
I can't tell you how I was tempted to write something like "NOW he tells us!" or "AAAARGH!" in that sample!
J Punch Label's transparent type is a cool effect! To be honest, I didn't even know about it until I made this GIF (I planned on making it a transparent GIF)! But like the Model T Fords, you can have Punch Label font in any color tape you want….. yeah, you get the picture! Only black tape is available to you in Punch label! If you want color, well maybe some font person has already made a label style font in colors! Then again, maybe that's going to be YOUR claim to fame! Keep poking around those font places!Enjoy!
Back to my PSP Suite index page!
* Originally, I did Erode the other image, but for Chromosome Light, Erosion is just too hard on the text, and takes too much body out of it. This is not totally bad for you could make "bad labels" (labels not impressed deeply enough) by eroding Chromosome Light. BTW: There is a Heavy version of Chromosome font out there somewhere, so I've heard.