cry for help with computer lettering for comics

[johncomic]

I now have to letter my comics with a font instead of by hand. Carpal tunnel has made hand lettering too painful and hard to control. I notice that most of the instructions I see about computer lettering assume that you have Adobe Illustrator. The best graphics program I currently own is Paint Shop Pro 8.

Anyone out there actually use PSP for their lettering? Recommendations, hints, etc? Or should I have my head examined for even thinking about using something other than Illustrator for a job like this?

Comments

[ginsu.livejournal.com]

Don't know about PSP, but many paint programs render text as a bitmap, meaning if you send the graphics to a printer it will not recognize the text is a font, nor scale it to match the printer's best quality output.

[jkcarrier.livejournal.com]

I letter in Photoshop, which I gather is kinda similar to PSP. Here's a quick rundown of my process:

http://jkcarrier.livejournal.com/189386.html

[johncomic.livejournal.com]

Thanks very much, JK, that's really helpful. I'm sure PSP would allow me to do something similar.

Does Photoshop also allow you to generate thought balloons, radio/electronic balloons, etc? Those strike me as trickier...

[jkcarrier.livejournal.com]

For thought balloons, I just make a bunch of overlapping oval shapes and merge them together. You can make jagged shapes with the pen tool -- instead of clicking and dragging to make a curve, you just click-click-click, like playing "connect the dots". ;-)

[johncomic.livejournal.com]

Gotcha. Sounds “fiddly but not difficult”! :)