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I am elaborating a business card style for LaTeX but I found out that even if I have the style and margin for the cards I can not make it look "pretty" like other text editors without overusing text-images insertions, and this become tedious over time and more if you need to overlap an image to another one, because the background of the image needs to be transparent and it needs to be edited for that.

So like the title says, is there a package so you can add effects to sentences (like 3D, shadows, background-fade, fade, etc.)? Or does someone know some effects to make text "pretty"?

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  • 6
    I guess a universal and general answer is TikZ – Jörg Dec 6 '12 at 23:18
  • 4
    I would add 'pstricks' to the list of possibilities. – Peter Jansson Dec 6 '12 at 23:27
14

Using pstricks, we can do the following:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{pst-all}
\usepackage{pst-light3d}
%http://mirrors.ucr.ac.cr/CTAN/graphics/pstricks/contrib/pst-light3d/pst-light3d-doc.pdf

\begin{document}

\begin{pspicture}(0,-1)(8,2)
\DeclareFixedFont{\bigsf}{T1}{phv}{b}{n}{1.5cm}
\pscharpath[linecolor=yellow,%
fillstyle=gradient,%
gradbegin=yellow,%
gradend=red,%
gradmidpoint=1,%
gradangle=5]%
{\bigsf PSTricks}
\end{pspicture}

\begin{pspicture}(0,-1)(8,2)
\DeclareFixedFont{\nbigsf}{T1}{phv}{b}{n}{1.3cm}
\psset{fillstyle=gradient,gradbegin=red,gradend=blue}
\pscharpath[gradangle=90]{\nbigsf PSTricks}
\pscharpath[gradangle=90,linestyle=none]{\nbigsf PSTricks}
\end{pspicture}

\begin{pspicture}(0,-1)(8,2)
\DeclareFixedFont{\Rmb}{T1}{ptm}{m}{n}{3cm}
\PstLightThreeDText[fillstyle=solid,fillcolor=yellow!100!red!70,
LightThreeDAngle=60,LightThreeDYLength=0.1]{\Rmb PSTricks}
\end{pspicture}

\end{document}

enter image description here

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  • Thx! its nearly what i am looking for. Theres a Documment where it explain about the "fillingstyle" options or advanced use for the package? – Yaren Dec 6 '12 at 23:43
  • @Yaren Try www.ctan.org/tex-archive/graphics/pstricks/contrib/pst-text and theory.stanford.edu/~sbansal/tut/latex/pstricks/chap9.pdf where I got the source for the example above. Note that you have to compile with latex or use auto-pst-pdf package to go directly into pdf with --enable-write18 or --shell-escape. – azetina Dec 6 '12 at 23:47
  • Thanks so much! the second link give me a idea of how the package works. – Yaren Dec 6 '12 at 23:51
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    @Yaren See my updated answer. – azetina Dec 7 '12 at 0:56
  • 1
    Thx for your time improving the answer, the second example helpme to see what to modify to make it change. cheers! – Yaren Dec 7 '12 at 1:16
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As you can see, there are indeed ways to make text "pretty" using TeX and friends but they are definitely not easy. (This is actually one of the reasons why my WordArt-loving colleagues find it hard to switch to LaTeX. I, however, no longer use them due to my own opinions about WordArt:) As mentioned in the comments above, you can use graphical packages like tikz and pstricks.

A very nice pstricks example has already been provided by azetina but if you want to broaden your horizon, here are some posts in tex.stack that might help you.

And here are some modified examples from the pgf manual.

Code

%https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/85863/is-there-is-a-package-so-you-can-add-text-with-visual-effects-like-wordart-fro
\documentclass[10pt]{article}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{fadings,decorations.text}

\begin{document}
% First figure
\noindent
\begin{tikzfadingfrompicture}[name=tikz]
\node [text=transparent!20]
{\fontfamily{ptm}\fontsize{45}{45}\bfseries\selectfont Ti\emph{k}Z};
\end{tikzfadingfrompicture}
\begin{tikzpicture}
\shade[path fading=tikz,fit fading=false,
left color=blue,right color=black]
(-2,-1) rectangle (2,1);
\end{tikzpicture}

% Second figure
\begin{tikzpicture}
\path [decorate, decoration={text along path,text format delimiters={[}{]},text align=fit to path,
text={A big [\color{red}]red[] and [\color{green}]green[] apple.}}]
(0,0) .. controls (0,2) and (3,2) .. (3,0);
\end{tikzpicture}

\end{document}

Output

enter image description here

enter image description here

Here is my attempt at creating a WordArt-like command. You can tweak it so that you can also control the xshift and yshift.

\documentclass[10pt]{article}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{fadings,decorations.text}
\newcommand{\winarty}[5]{
\begin{tikzpicture}
\draw [xshift=2.5pt,yshift=-2pt,decorate, decoration={text along path,text format delimiters={[}{]},text align=fit to path,
text={[\fontsize{45}{45}\bfseries\color{#4}\selectfont]#5[]}},]
(#1,0) .. controls (#1,0.75) and (#2,-0.75) .. (#2,0.5);

\path [decorate, decoration={text along path,text format delimiters={[}{]},text align=fit to path,
text={[\fontsize{45}{45}\bfseries\color{#3}\selectfont]#5[]}},]
(#1,0) .. controls (#1,0.75) and (#2,-0.75) .. (#2,0.5);
\end{tikzpicture}
}
\begin{document}

\def\Exampletext{This is an example text.}
\winarty{1}{12}{blue!75!black}{gray}{\Exampletext}
\end{document}

Here is the output.

enter image description here

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