Hey all!! Trina here with a so useful tutorial about Fake Text Wrapping in Photoshop.  So lets get started!

In this Photoshop tutorial, we’re going to learn how to create a Photoshop text wrap effect by faking the text wrap feature you’d normally find in a page layout program, allowing us to wrap text around objects.

Begin by finding your picture. Here I have my image of my son as Drum Major.

I want to add some text to this image, and I want the text to wrap around my son. Photoshop doesn’t come with an official “text wrap” option, but thanks to paths and Photoshop’s ability to use a path as a container for text, this is going to be easy.

Step 1: Select the Rectangle Tool - Since we’re going to use a path as a container for our text, before we can add our text, we need a path! Rectangle Tool (not to be confused with the Rectangular Marquee Tool) to create a rectangular path, which will become the basic shape of my text container. I’ll select the Rectangle Tool from the Tools palette:

Or you could also press U on your keyboard to quickly select it.

Step 2: Select the “Paths” Option in the Options Bar - I want to use the Rectangle Tool to draw a rectangular-shaped path, so I’m going to click on the Paths icon in the Options Bar, which is the iconh in the middle of the three (the one on the left is the vector shapes option and the one on the right is for drawing pixel-based shapes):

Step 3: Drag out a Rectangular-Shaped Path - With the Rectangle Tool selected and set to draw paths, I’m simply going to drag out a rectangular-shaped path, in the same way that I would drag out a selection with the Rectangular Marquee Tool, and this path will become the container for my text:

As you can see in the image above, my path is currently running through my son, which isn’t going to help me much when what I really want is for my text to wrap around the his right side, not flow over the top of it. I need a way to reshape my path so that the path itself wraps around his side. We’ll do that next.

Step 4: Select The Ellipse Tool - I’ll select my Ellipse Tool, which by default is hiding behind the Rectangle Tool in the Tools palette, so I’ll need to click on the Rectangle Tool, hold my mouse button down for a second or two, and then select the Ellipse Tool from the fly out menu that appears:

Step 5: Set The Ellipse Tool To “Subtract” Mode - With the Ellipse Tool selected, if you look up in the Options Bar, you’ll see a group of four icons that look like squares connected together in different ways. These four icons represent four options that determine how the path you’re about to draw is going to behave. The one we want is the second one from the left, which is the Subtract from path area icon. I’ll click on it to select it:

With this option selected, if I drag out an elliptical-shaped path with the Ellipse Tool, which I’ll do in a moment, any part of the new path that overlaps my original rectangular path will be subtracted from the original path. Let’s see what I mean. I’m going to drag out an elliptical path around my son side. Before I begin, if I look closely at my cursor, I can see a small minus sign (“-“) in the bottom right corner of it, letting me know that I’m in “Subtract” mode:

You can also access the “Subtract” mode simply by holding down your Alt /Option key before you start dragging out your path, which is a bit faster than selecting the option in the Options Bar (you can release the Alt/Option key right after you begin dragging out your path). I’ll go ahead and drag out a path around the my son side. If I need to reposition my path as I’m dragging, which I almost always need to do, I can hold down my Spacebar and move the path around on the screen with my mouse to reposition it, then release the Spacebar and continue dragging out the path. Here’s the image with the second path around my son’s side:

You will notice it looks like I have two separate paths in the image at this point – a rectangular one and an elliptical one. But the only active path is the original rectangular one, which now isn’t quite as rectangular because, even though Photoshop isn’t giving us any visual clues of what’s really happening, the elliptical path is now subtracting (or “cutting out”, if you prefer) part of the rectangular path around his side.
Now that we have our path in place, let’s add our text.

Step 6: Add your Text - All that’s left to do now is add my test, and for that, I need Type Tool, so I’ll select if from the Tools palette:

I could also quickly access the Type Tool by pressing T on my keyboard. Then, with the Type Tool selected. I’ll go up to the Options Bar at the top of the screen and select my font, font size and text color. I’ll just keep things simple here and go with Times New Roman Bold set to a size of 16pt, with my text color set to white:

To use the path I’ve created as a container for my text, all I need to do is move my cursor anywhere inside the active path area. When I do that, my Type Tool cursor changes from having a dotted square outline around it to a dotted elliptical outline, indicating that the path will become my text container if I click here and start typing:

To accept the text and exit out of the text editing mode, I’ll click the checkmark up in the Options Bar:

Finally, to hide the path so it’s no longer visible in my image, I’ll simply click on the Background layer in the Layers palette.

Here is my final image.

And there we have it! That’s the basics of how to fake a page layout program’s “text wrap” feature in Photoshop. I sure hope you have enjoy this tutorial has much as I have enjoyed creating it for you.