This is really cool, I found it on a youtube video. You can place text on your images right in Leopard using Textedit and Preview. Here’s how:
Open Textedit, type a suitable label or string of text. Set the font as you desire (cmd+t), go to “File -> Print” and choose “Open PDF in Preview”.
Now using the “Select Tool” select the text (draw a box around it) and press (cmd+k) to crop. Save the cropped PDF as a PNG image (File -> Save As)
Now with the saved PNG image, hold the mouse button on the select tool until the drop down menu appears, and choose “Instant Alpha”. The image will now let you select the background portions to remove. Click on each white area until they are all grey and then press “Enter”. Now, “File -> Save As” a PNG again, this time you will notice the “Alpha” tickbox is checked. Overwrite the existing PNG file.
Now, with the saved image, press “cmd+a” to select all, then “cmd+c” to copy the item. Go across to your target image and press “cmd+v” to paste the text in. You can drag the text anywhere you like on the image!
Enjoy! * I took this picture whilst on holiday in Margaret River, Western Australia
April 18th, 2008 at 4:35 pm
You can do this much more easily, just got to Tools.. Annotate.. and select Add Note… and you can create the text directly in preview. Format the text, resize the text box, re-edit etc.
Well done Apple with Preview.
By the way, you can’t do the same trick with a PDF file… with a PDF it creates a note to the left of the page..
May 21st, 2008 at 4:29 am
I managed the hard way but the easier way from Jon T: neither I nor my Apple one-to-one guy could get the selections, including Add Note under Tools..Annotate to become “live.” Tried on a jpg opened in preview.