Ever wondered how you could get great looking banners and text without going out and buying a $2000 dollar piece of software. Are free tools like Gimp too difficult to master?

There is an easy way to do this without having to learn, or spend so much time, money, and effort in to creating some nice looking text.



This can be done with the Paint.net program. This program is similiar to the paint program that comes with windows, but it includes layers, and some extra effect settings.

When you just pick the text tool and start writing, your text will look something like this.

jaggies.png

As you can see, jagged edges and the text just looks bad, specially if this were to go on a header. Here, if you had photoshop, the program wouldnt of given you bad looking text in the first place. But we can fix this.

Decide what size text you want. Now, using the text tool, write what you want on a new drawing but this time make it twice as large as the size you want it. So if you want text at size 48, make your initial text at…. thats right.. 96.

Once you do that, rezise the entire image by 50 percent. So if its an 800 x 600 drawing, cut that to 400 x 300. Simple right?
Do that and you will notice that your text is the size you wanted it to be, and it no longer has jaggies. It now looks very smooth and somewhat professional.

smooth.png

As you can see, the diffrence is pretty significant. So now when you need sharp looking text on a banner or something, you know what to do.

diffrence.png