Extracting text from an image

Hi there,

I'm pretty much a newbie at photoshop, so I'll try to explain what I'm trying to do as best I can...

I have a photo of a shop sign with text on it. I'd like to extract the text for use on a website, so I can make a header based around the text on the sign. The way I've approached this so far is to use the magic wand. The text on the image is well differentiated from the background, so the boundary the wand selects is pretty accurate.

What I'd like to so next is to take the wand 'shape' and make it into a seperate image, which I can colour and resize as I wish for use on the site. This is this bit I'm getting stuck on though.

I can select the text boundary, and drag it over to a new image, but after that I'm stuck. How can I manipulate the shape that I select with the wand and make it into a 'real' image?

I hope this is clear. I'm sure this is a common task in photoshop, so any help would be much appreciated.

I think I see what you're doing, but man it sounds like you're going about it the hard way, seriously. My guess that regardless of its size on the sign, the letters are in a specific font, and that with a bit of research, you can find a matching font on your computer. You may have to mess with kerning and some of the other tools in your character/paragraph palettes, but in the end, you'll have a perfect match that you can edit at will.

That said, once you've got your selection, there's a few things you can do. You can go into your paths palette and save the selection as a working path. You can also just create another layer, and then fill that layer with whatever color you want. Now you've got your letters on a separate layer that you can edit independently as you will.

hi,
it would probably help if we could see what the images look like... you'll find there so many ways to do the same thing... and it just depends on the images that involved which way might be best...

now this is just one....

now you mention you select the text easy... good.... then do a copy of the selection !! ... (your drag meathod is fine also ..

at this point you can either do a past and it will be on a seperate layer of the main image.... or bring up your other image and paste into that... the selction will be on a "seperate layer" also.... and that the important part....

now once done... then you can easily change the color of the text.. many differet ways to do that....

but here what maybe important for you since you want to to get the right perspect... is to use the transform tool....!!! i believe that is what your asking for the next step.. the transform tool you have a lot of things you can do with that rotate, perspective, distort, etc..... a lot of fun playing with it...

davemere said:

Hi there,

I'm pretty much a newbie at photoshop, so I'll try to explain what I'm trying to do as best I can...

I have a photo of a shop sign with text on it. I'd like to extract the text for use on a website, so I can make a header based around the text on the sign. The way I've approached this so far is to use the magic wand. The text on the image is well differentiated from the background, so the boundary the wand selects is pretty accurate.

What I'd like to so next is to take the wand 'shape' and make it into a seperate image, which I can colour and resize as I wish for use on the site. This is this bit I'm getting stuck on though.

I can select the text boundary, and drag it over to a new image, but after that I'm stuck. How can I manipulate the shape that I select with the wand and make it into a 'real' image?

I hope this is clear. I'm sure this is a common task in photoshop, so any help would be much appreciated.