Filling gaps within font characters.

[Kevin Camp]

i assume that you are wanting to fill the white areas seen in your samples…

you could use an effect like paint bucket, that allows you to point a ‘fill point’ at an area and fill it with a color. you would need multiple paint bucket effects to fill all those areas, but it would work.

or, you could duplicate the text layer, convert the duplicate to masks (select text layer, choose layer>create masks from text). then remove the ‘inner’ masks to leave just the outer most mask and set the solid color to white (or use the fill effect). then with that layer below the text layer it should fill in the open areas.

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[James Curran]

Thanks.

The trouble is that the project needs to be localised for various languages too, so ideally I need a method that can easily be applied to any word and isn’t bespoke to specific characters.

Is there a way?

[Kevin Camp]

i can’t think of an easy, universal way to do it…

the closest would be to add a stroke (layer style, not the effect) that is big enough to fill in the inner areas, but, of course, that will also add a stroke around the outer area too.

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[James Curran]

That’s what I thought.

I do want the font to have a stroke too, but a different colour to that of the fill, and not one that’s big enough to fill in all the gaps so it isn’t an option unfortunately.

I think paint bucket is the way to go. Manually modifying fill points for each word seems easier than messing around with masks.

Thanks for your help!

[Kevin Camp]

[James Curran] “I do want the font to have a stroke too, but a different colour to that of the fill, and not one that’s big enough to fill in all the gaps”

the mask route may be better, it would then allow you to add a stroke (probably layer style, rather than the effect due to added ‘outer’ control). otherwise, i’m not sure how you’ll go about getting a stroke…

also, with masks, you could simply select all masks and set them to ‘add’, which would fill in all the gaps, without needing to pick through them… although this would also fill the inner part of, say, an ‘o’ or ‘p’ or similar character, so those inner masks would still need to be set to ‘difference’ or ‘subtract’…

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW