Converting word documents to images

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leavings

leavings

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This didn't seem to fit well in any forum...hope I can get an answer here.

I'm working on album art right now, trying to place the lyrics I processed in word into a photoshop 7 file. The problem is that while cutting and pasting retains the text format, it also brings the background along with it. I had planned to put the text over an image, but so long as I can't shake the background color this is an impossibility. If I try and paste the text into a photoshop text box, the formatting is lost.

So...
Does anyone know how to save Microsoft Word text as an image file without a background? Alternately, does anyone know how to manipulate the pasted image in photoshop so that I can get rid of the background and place the text independently?

Let me know if you have any suggestions,
Peter
 
Last edited:
leavings said:
This didn't seem to fit well in any forum...hope I can get an answer here.

I'm working on album art right now, trying to place the lyrics I processed in word into a photoshop 7 file. The problem is that while cutting and pasting retains the text format, it also brings the background along with it. I had planned to put the text over an image, but so long as I can't shake the background color this is an impossibility. If I try and paste the text into a photoshop text box, the formatting is lost.

So...
Does anyone know how to save Microsoft Word text as an image file without a background? Alternately, does anyone know how to manipulate the pasted image in photoshop so that I can get rid of the background and place the text independently?

Let me know if you have any suggestions,
Peter
Click to expand...
Couldn't you edit the document so that there is no background and then do a screen capture?
 
You mean edit the word document so it doesn't have a background? I tried but could only find a way to change the color, not eliminate the background entirely.

How do you do a screen capture on a windows machine?
 
leavings said:
You mean edit the word document so it doesn't have a background? I tried but could only find a way to change the color, not eliminate the background entirely.
Click to expand...
You could change the color to something completely opposite the text...or bright blue (bluescreen effect). Copy it to PhotoShop (or I use Paint Shop Pro) and save it as a a transparent GIF with the transparency matching the background color. This will possibly deteriorate the quality of the text as an image though

How do you do a screen capture on a windows machine?
Click to expand...
CONTROL plus PRINT SCREEN will copy the screen...then paste it in PSP or PhotoShop.
 
Seems like Word always has to have a background. When I change the background color, the change does not show up in the print view (which is the only view that maintains the column format in the text).

As for the screen capture, it captures everything. Text, background, etc. So it's more or less the same end result as pasting directly into photoshop.

Doesn't it seem like saving text as an image would be a relatively simple procedure? I guess I'm just going to have to re-type everything in photoshop...
 
Geeesh, it's not rocket science.

You capture the screen as a separate image file. Then the file will have a background color -- one solid color, whatever the capture software grabbed off Word's window -- and a forground color -- the color of the text.

Then you make the background be transparent, by masking or transparency or however Photoshop handles this.

Then you lay it wherever you want, the background color disappears.

OR...

I'm sure Photoshop has a text tool. Paste the text from the Word into the text tool, format it with the same font and font size you had in the Word doc, and place it where you want.
 
Hey, I studied rocket science in college and it was nowhere near this complicated.

Problem is that Photoshop (shockingly) does not have a tool good for eradicating a background color from text. The magic wand or magic eraser are capable of getting rid of the color outside of the text with minimal degradation, but then you have to tediously remove any remnants of color from inside individual letters like o, e, a, etc. This DOES degrade the text significantly, as wanted pixels are stripped away with the unwanted.

I suspected that there would be a masking or sponge tool to hide or erase only one color from an image. There isn't, however, at least not that I have found in the hours I've spent working on this.

Photoshop DOES have a text tool, but it's paltry compared to the formatting capabilities of word. Essentially I will have to lay out each line of text according to the columnar structure I got out of word. It's going to be painstaking, but I'm realizing that it's my only option if I want to avoid degradation.

I DID have a different idea. The whole reason this is an issue is because I want to place the text over an image. Is there any way I can import a background image into Word so that the text is already connected to it when I copy and paste into Photoshop?

Sucks...thought it would be easier than this. Oh well. Anyone who has an idea, let me know if you're out there.
 
Tried something new...

Adobe Illustrator supports a columnar structure in a text field, so I tried importing the columns from Word. It worked, and what's more Illustrator allowed me to save the text as a gif without a background.

HOWEVER, I was unable to match the resolution of the Illustrator image with that in Photoshop, so when I opened the gif in Photoshop it was way too small. I scaled it using the transform tool, but as you would expect it made the text fuzzy and pixelated.

So I'm still looking for suggestions about the previous problem, but if anyone has an idea how to get resolutions in Illustrator and Photoshop to match that would be helpful too.

Thanks,
Peter
 
You mean Photoshop can't handle something that you can do readily with PaintShop Pro?

I'm stunned.

I don't believe it. How can a professional tool like that not let you select a single color to be transparent?
 
Sorry, I was wrong to say that Photoshop doesn't have the tool I need with certainty. What I meant to say was that in my hours of tinkering and searching on the web I have yet to find it. That's why I'm asking.

If Paintshop can handle it then please let me know how. I don't care what I use as long as it works.
 
Okay, I figured out a reasonable solution.

You're right Alchuck, you CAN designate transparency to a specific color in Photoshop. However, it seems this has to be done via 'Save for Web,' and is far from perfect. After getting rid of the background, a lot of it still clung to the text. I got rid of this by playing with the brightness/contrast.

So, problem solved.
 
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