Getting the outer curve of an expanded stroke text

[syvid]

Hi

I have a font that I want to make bolder before converting it to curve. I have tried many ways but I can't seem to get the outer/outside line of the expanded stroke as a curve. I can only get the curve of the original text 'bold'

Would appreciate to be pointed in the right direction.

 

Thanks

[GarryP]

Welcome to the forums @syvid

Expand Stroke doesn’t include the stroke as part of the expansion – they are expanded as two separate things.
(Also, I don’t think you can use Expand Stroke directly on Artistic Text but I may be wrong.)

One thing you can do, and other people may offer other methods, is to Convert To Curves, then use Expand Stroke and then use the Boolean operations to ‘merge’ the expanded curve and stroke together – see attached video (you don’t need to make a layer invisible/visible as I did, that’s just to show what happens).

[firstdefence]

1 hour ago, GarryP said:

I don’t think you can use Expand Stroke directly on Artistic Text but I may be wrong.

You are right Garry, Ive just tried Expand Stroke on a text layer and it doesn't do anything.

You can use Boolean: Add to quickly convert text to curves and have them all merged in a Curves Layer, the fill and stroke colours are removed so you need to select a colour for both or either/either but it's a pretty quick way to get text as merged curves.

[syvid]

Amazing! thanks both finally got it!! 

[GarryP]

1 hour ago, firstdefence said:

You are right Garry, Ive just tried Expand Stroke on a text layer and it doesn't do anything.

I’ve just checked in V1.10.6 and Expand Stroke didn’t expand the Artistic Text to curves in that either.

I thought we could do that but maybe I just dreamed it.

If it’s really not supposed to work then maybe Expand Stroke should be disabled in the menu if only an Artistic Text layer is selected.

[GarryP]

You're welcome @syvid

[firstdefence]

3 hours ago, GarryP said:

I’ve just checked in V1.10.6 and Expand Stroke didn’t expand the Artistic Text to curves in that either.

I thought we could do that but maybe I just dreamed it.

If it’s really not supposed to work then maybe Expand Stroke should be disabled in the menu if only an Artistic Text layer is selected.

Maybe an option to "Expand Text To Curves" would be a worthwhile idea, I'm sure people want to do such a thing all the time and a fast track to that would be a bonus for sure. Makes sense have Expand Stroke disabled until a viable layer is selected but at the moment even if a curve has no stroke, Expand Stroke is still selectable. 

[R C-R]

3 hours ago, firstdefence said:

Maybe an option to "Expand Text To Curves" would be a worthwhile idea...

Isn't that what convert to curves already does?

3 hours ago, firstdefence said:

Makes sense have Expand Stroke disabled until a viable layer is selected... 

Agreed.

[firstdefence]

22 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Isn't that what convert to curves already does?

Dang ya got me.