Re: How to impose small-enough numbers on a photo?

[voxwoman <voxwoman -at- gmail -dot- com>]

I thought PhotoShop will let you use pixels as units for fonts as well as
point size (preferences > units or something close to that). But I'm using
CS3, so it may be a new feature.

An alternative numbering scheme is to have a second image which is a
silhouette of the first, and then put numbers on THAT, so it won't obscure
the original photograph.

-Wendy

On Sun, Jul 26, 2009 at 11:28 PM, Guy K. Haas <guy -at- hiskeyboard -dot- com> wrote:

> This is not directly about tech writing, but it touches on it a related
> problem.  I have a 5-megapixel black-and-white photo (scanned to .jpg
> but saved in .psd format) of a seventh grade dance circa 1955.  It shows
> probably 40 people, from foreground (head about 1/10 the height of the
> image) to background (heads less than half that tall).
>
> For the class newsletter, we'd like to apply numbers to the image --
> say, on people's chests -- and see who can identify the most people.
>
> Now, the problem is that with my Photoshop CS2, I can't make the text
> digits small enough.  The smallest font they offer is 6pt, and that
> makes digits that are as tall as the smallest faces in the image.
>
> I've thought of resizing the image LARGER, but that invents pixels,
> reducing quality.
>
> I considered doing it with a grid [A,B,C,... across and 1, 2, 3, ...
> down the side], but that seemed cluttered.
>
> I've thought of callout leader lines from people to the margin, but that
> gets cluttery.
>
> Would the GIMP or some other shareware/free tool be of any help?
>
> It would be REALLY tricky to blow up the image, apply text numbers to an
> overlay, then resize it downward and superimpose only that layer to the
> original photo.
>
> Any other bright ideas?
>
> --Thanks,
>     Guy K. Haas
>     Software Exegete in Silicon Valley
>
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Free Software Documentation Project Web Cast: Covers developing Table of
Contents, Context IDs, and Index, as well as Doc-To-Help  
2009 tips, tricks, and best practices.
http://www.doctohelp.com/SuperPages/Webcasts/

Help & Manual 5: The complete help authoring tool for individual
authors and teams. Professional power, intuitive interface. Write
once, publish to 8 formats. Multi-user authoring and version control! http://www.helpandmanual.com/

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