Tuesday quick tip: what to do when text on a path messes up as you mirror

The day I learned about placing text around a circle was a great day! I had been doing it manually before that. LOL! And then my mind was completely blown when I found out you could put text around ANY shape. (If you don’t know how this works, you’ll want to read this post and this one). But let me warn your — sometimes when you mirror text that’s on a path it goes crazy. Letters might get mixed up, font size could change,  letters slant oddly, and a myriad of other issues.

Sometimes it works itself out, sometimes it doesn’t. It may look odd even if you flip it back…

…or temporarily not move when you move the shape.

But if you’re working with a material like HTV or tattoo paper and you HAVE to mirror the text for it to read correctly on your project. So what do you do?

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Convert to Path

There’s a very easy solution to this. I just need to give you a warning first. When you do this, your text becomes a regular cut image. What that means it that you lose the ability to edit the words, choose a different font, figure out what the font is, or change the font size. So before you do it, you want to either make a copy of the text box and shape, or make a note for yourself about what font and size you are using.

Now that the dire warning is out of the way, let me show you how to deal with the issue with 1 click. You’re going to do what I just said — change the wording from text to a regular image. We’ll use the option Convert to Path. What that does is to take any design with special properties you can adjust– text, arc, rounded rectangle regular polygon, flexishapes — and turn those into regular shapes. You might do this if, for example, you wanted to edit the points on a rounded rectangle or manually adjust one angle in a triangle you drew as a flexishape.

Here’s the process–

1. Pull your text toward your path shape to wrap it around.
2. Turn the text into a regular path. You can do that with Object drop down menu>Convert to Path or Right click>Convert to Path.
3. Mirror your text, and the shape if you need to. Use Object drop down menu>Mirror>Flip Horizontally or Right click>Flip Horizontally.

Make sure to use this order or it doesn’t work.

Convert to Path vs. Make Compound Path

You may be asking this question — “How is Convert to Path different than Make Compound Path?” Great question!

Convert to Path is used specifically when you have one of those special images with editable properties that I mentioned. It takes away those editable options and makes it a regular image.

Make Compound Path is more generic. You would do this when you want to combine different elements into a single compound path. Use this, for example, when you have drawn a group of simple lines and want to combine them into a closed shapes with point editing (they have to all be in the same compound path to do that). Or, to combine something like a circle and a smaller circle inside it into a single compound path so that it looks like a donut (has holes). For more detailed information on compound paths, see this post.

In this case of text on path, either Convert to Path or Make Compound Path will give you a similar result but with 1 minor difference. When you type text, it is a grouping of individual letters. If you use Convert to Path, the letters are still grouped — each letter is a separate piece and they are temporarily tied together. With Make Compound Path, the letters become a single compound path.

Which one?

Which one you need depends on your particular design and what you want to do with it.

• If you want to edit the points on the text as a whole, you’d want Make Compound Path.
• To edit the points on individual letters, use Convert to Path and then Ungroup.
• To fill each letter with a different color or fill pattern, use Convert to Path and then Ungroup.
• If you have something like an “o” and want to remove the inner circle to do something like replace it with a heart, use Convert to Path, then Ungroup, then Release Compound Path on that letter only. After you’ve got the heart in place, you can select it and the outer circle and/or the rest of the letters and use Make Compound Path.

What happens to the path shape

When you are wrapping text around a shape, you are telling the software that the only purpose of the shape is to provide a path for the words. Since the words sit right on the line of the shape (unless you move them up or down), the lines of the shape would actually cut into the words. Notice in my pictures above that the circle is gray. It was red before I pulled the text toward it. The gray is the software’s way of showing you that the shape won’t cut. Remember — Silhouette Studio is assuming you only have the shape there to make the words go in that shape.

When you turn the text into a regular shape as we’ve done here, that changes. The shape becomes an independent piece again, so would cut unless you do something. See how the circle turned back to red?

If you do NOT want it to cut, you can either delete it or use one of the options in the Send area to make it not cut (see more on that here and here).