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Question

New to Photoshop and want to add text to a photo. I want to create a text box that has a masked background( I think it is?) Where the text is laid on a (color of choice) in the text box. Then then the Text is typed on that masked portion on the pic... I know how to do this in Photoscape, and Win7 photo editor, however I cannot find the tool to add white background behind my blue text...F1 unrolls every rabbit hole in Cs6 wich one must know the exact phrase to find it.
Thanks
Netcommercial

Answer 1

after loading up photoshop you file > open > and load in your photo, or you open photoshop and then simply drag in the photo into the work area.
that done you then choose the shapes tool, every tool when hovered over shows you what it is. most tools also have a little arrow on so if you left click and hold a choice appears. Most if not all of the tools look like what you want it to do. the eraser looks like an eraser, the text has a letter T on it, 2 icons down from that is the shapes tool.
Choose your rectangle or whatever
on the toolbar at the top when you chose a tool, your options change. So if you choose the text tool, then the top toolbar changes to allow you to choose the size of the font , colour etc.
after choosing your rectangle the 2nd option on the toolbar says path , shape or pixels
the 3rd icon up on the tools is the foreground and background colour.the front icon of the 2 is the foreground    clicking that icon will allow you to change that colour.
choose shape and then click and hold the left mouse button on the photo where you want the top left hand corner to be, then hold and drag it down to the right hand bottom corner. It should then fill a shape, whichever you chose , with the colour whichever you chose. but also it will auto create a new layer as you chose shape from the three choices.
the next step is now go to the text tool, ( the T icon on the tools ) , the toolbar changes to allow you to change the font , and size and colour.
type in your text, the commit it, by pressing return or clicking the arrow that appeared on the toolbar to confirm you want it.
and thats it all done. the only thing to do now is move things around where you want it, this is done by selecting the layer you want, so shape layer, or text layer, from the layers pallette, which is that whole bunch of panels on the right.  If you do not see layers then go to the top toolbar where it says file edit image layer etc, and choose window, when it opens make sure layer is ticked.
to move stuff and and resize etc, you need to on the move tool, which is the top icon, arrow with plus sign with arrows, again looking like what you need to do.
so select hat tool, then go to the layer you want to move, shape layer or the text layer and automatically you will see the transform handles, 9 little square nodes. when you hover over any of them the mouse icon change to show you can stretch it to make it fatter or thinner.
if you hover just off and of the corners  of those transform handles the icon will change to a rotate icon allowing you to rotate the shape.
i may have slightly over complicated it by giving you more choice and explaining the terms. but all the info you need is in here
the final step SAVE