Credit Reddit user u/Brick_Suit

We want YOU for the coming MEME war!

r/The_Donald is deploying a program to train you how to meme our side to victory in 2020 and to help KEEP AMERICA GREAT!

If you love America, you already have the greatest asset you will need to succeed, the heart of a patriot!

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LAST WEEK RECAP - FILE TYPES - .JPG , .PNG , & .PDN

 

Last week in LESSON TWO: FILE TYPES, we looked at three file types. .PDN which is the file type Paint(dot)Net uses to save projects, as well as the image file types .JPG and .PNG. Before we get started on this week's tutorial there are a few more things I'd like to mention about .JPG and .PNG files.

First, .JPGs use an algorithm to "compress" an image file size and this results is a small loss of detail. For this reason .JPGs are called "lossy" files. In comparison .PNG files do not "compress" images so there is no loss of detail. If you ever are working on a project where you will be manipulating and saving a file multiple times before rendering your final image, .PNGs are a good option so you won't lose detail each time. In general, your final image can always be a .JPG unless you need the transparent background effect that a .PNG can provide.

Second, just because .PNG files CAN have a transparent background doesn't mean that they always will. Think of a .JPG file as being a white canvas that a painter would use and a .PNG file as being a sheet of glass that can also be painted on. Now paint the same picture on the canvas (.JPG) and the glass (.PNG). Both images will appear identical and you wont be able to see through either one. Next, if you scrape all the paint off an area of the "canvas" .JPG image, what you will see is the white canvas below. But if you scrape all the paint off an area of the "glass" .PNG image, you will expose the transparent background and be able to see what lies behind it.

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TRAINING SESSION 03: TEXT CAPTIONS

 

Concepts

 

While an image MEME can sometimes stand on its own without text, often text is an integral part of the final MEME displayed. While there are many topics that can be addressed about text in memes, this week we will be sticking to these.

FONT CHOICE - You should always seek to display text using a font that has a good balance of visibility, readability, and size.

SPELLING and GRAMMAR - Few things can immediately diminish the effectiveness of a meme as quickly as text that contains misspelled words and/or bad grammar.

FONT BORDERS - Sometimes your text will need to have borders placed around the letters in the font in order to make the letters more visible against the background.

Typography (Text and Fonts) is an incredibly detailed field with lots of interesting and esoteric terms and concepts like "serif" and "kerning" just to name a few. We are not going to get into these in any real depth in this tutorial. Our goal this week is just to get the key text concepts above under your belt so that you can go forth and meme more effectively. But, while typography and the optimized display of text have a huge number of best practices that you likely would not recognize in a test, the good news is that YOU ALREADY KNOW ALL ABOUT THESE RULES! You already have a lot of knowledge about what type of text looks good, so your task is just to create new text that mimics the effective styles you have seen.

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Practical application

 

In this training session we will not be making any specific meme, but we will be using specific landscape image files as the base over which we will place our text.

Here is an "open road" landscape number one. http://magaimg.net/img/8sg5.jpg

And here is a more challenging "sun's rays" landscape number two. http://magaimg.net/img/8sg7.jpg

 

Now jump into your Paint(dot)Net app and do the following. Load up both of the images above as separate layers in a new project and save that new project as "Text Practice". Then go ahead...

WHAT! No "training wheels"? But I need step by step instructions Brick!

Ok, but this is the LAST week for step by step image loading instructions. Next week you get on the big boy/girl bicycle.

make a copy of landscape number one by opening it up in a separate tab, using a right mouse click, and selecting “copy image” (Apple users are your own here but I imagine you know what to do) Now jump into your Paint(dot)Net app and do the following. Hit the EDIT button located next to FILE on the top left of the menu bar, Select “Paste into New Image” from the drop down menu that appears. Paint(dot)Net will now create a new image of the landscape number one scene that you just copied. Note how this is labeled as “Layer 1”.

On top of this layer you want to place the second layer of landscape number two. So open up the landscape number two image link to get that image displayed in your browser. Next, simply copy it the same way you did with landscape number one by using a right mouse click, and selecting “copy image”.

Then, return to your Paint(dot)Net app, select the EDIT button again, but this time select “Paste into New Layer” from the drop down menu and the image of landscape number two (with the sun's rays) will be put on top of your landscape number one as a new layer. Note how this new layer is labeled “Layer 2” and it blocks Layer 1 below it from being seen. However since the new layer is slightly larger than layer one, a warning message will pop up that gives you a choice to keep the "canvas" (the size of the project image) the same size or to expand it. In this case just select the option to keep the canvas the same size and then hit enter until the new image layer saves.

Now save the entire project as a .PDN by using the FILE menu. Name it TEXT PRACTICE and save it as a .PDN file. This is your project file in Paint(dot)net for this tutorial

 

We are going to start our practice by creating two new layers for text, and again, this is the LAST week for these step by step directions in this area. Before you can add the new text layers, you should DESELECT the Sun's Rays landscape Layer 2 image that you created. To do this go back to the EDIT button and then hit Deselect from the drop down menu. (You will find it all the way at the bottom).

If you were to add new text in at this point you would actually be putting it into the same layer as the sun's rays landscape two which we don't want, so you next need to create new blank layers for your text. Do this by going to the LAYERS button on the menu bar and selecting the very first option on the drop down menu which is "Add New Layer". At this point a completely blank Layer 3 will appear and this is where you will place your first text sample. Repeat these last steps to add one more layer and a new blank layer 4 will also appear.

Right now we only want to work with placing text on top of the open road landscape image in layer 1 so we will want to make layer 2 invisible. Do this by going into the Layer window in the bottom right of the Paint(dot)Net work area and unchecking the box by layer 2. You should now only be seeing the image of the open road landscape.

 

Now let's enter some text. You can select the Text tool by clicking on it on the vertical toolbar or by hitting the "T" key on your keyboard (the shortcut key to the Text tool). Your cursor should now change to a bracket and once you click somewhere on Layer 4 and once it does you can begin to enter your text. But Before you do enter any text lets set the Font to "Arial Black" using the drop down menu and the Font size 20 using the menu there. Now just type a sentence that goes across the entire image.

Now its time to experiment a little. You can change the color of your text using the color wheel in the lower left by selecting a point within the circle or by selecting one of the small 32 preset color boxes on the bottom of that window. You can change the font type and even the font size. Find something that looks good to you. I generally only use white or black text, unless the meme is helped by a different color of lettering. You can do whatever you want but I would recommend you stay away from yellow lettering and even red as they usually look very bad.

As for what font to use I usually stick to "sans serif" fonts that do not have any little frills (the serifs) at the bottom of letters like "i" and "l". Fonts like Arial, Arial Black, and Impact are my favorite. In general I like simple fonts that do not detract from the image. You should also be aware that if you ever use the "Comic Sans" font in a non-ironic way that I may disown you. Repeat after me, "Comic Sans is the worst font ever produced and should never be used."

Move your text so that it appears in the top third of the open road image and you will notice that white letters work very well against the blue background of the sky, but if you move the sentence down to the middle of the image the white text can become lost against the lighter shades of the image behind it. Finally, if you move the text all the way to the bottom darker third of the image, the white text begins to look good again although problems start to appear where the traffic lines intersect it. Experiment a bit with different colors and font and see which combinations work best in the middle and bottom thirds of the image.

HERE'S A VERY IMPORTANT LIMITATION TO TEXT IN PAINT(DOT)NET THAT YOU NEED TO UNDERSTAND. When you first enter text into a blank layer, you can still change that text's color, size, and even font as many times as you want to using the menus available. However, ONCE YOU LEAVE THE LAYER WHATEVER YOU SELECTED CAN NO LONGER BE CHANGED WITH THE SAME DROP DOWN MENUS. So take the time to decide what works best before you move on to your next step.

 

Ok, now lets look at text on the more challenging sun's rays landscape two image. Go back to the layer pane in the lower right and click on the check box by layer 2. Whatever text you had visible before will now be on top of the sun's rays image and chances are it looks really really bad. The contrasting shades and color in the sun's rays image mean that any solid color text is going to have severe problems being readable as the background behind it just varies too much.

This is where OUTLINING your text becomes necessary. Unfortunately Paint(dot)Net does not have an easy to use native tool that can place a colored border around text.

While there are several work arounds that you can use to get a border around your text, here is the easiest one I could find in all of YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mnqDCa87iI&t=2s

Rather than try to explain this technique here, I will just leave you with his link because I don't think I can do a better job of explaining it than he can. After watching the video above, come back and repeat his steps and see if you can come up with bordered text that looks good against the sun's rays background. This will be difficult, so don't get discouraged if you don't get it on the first couple of tries. Once you do learn it though, its easy to do over and over.

 

On a final note, text is often the last thing that gets added to a meme. You might be a little tired or rushed, but do not skimp on the steps of creating the best text possible including making sure that everything is spelled correctly, I always proofread my captions several times and spellcheck anything I am not 110% positive about.

So let's see what you can do with these text tips. Now that you know about layers, PNG files, and a bit about text, you can strike off on your own and really get your feet wet. Post your images to the_Donald and put a link to your post in the comments below so that you can inspire others.

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Text formatting can be very complicated and this link will provide you with additional instruction Adding Text to your Memes

This link will also be helpful for some of the other basic concepts mentioned above such as moving layers, selecting and deselecting. Paint.net : The Basics

 

While you are welcome to train with us using your own software, we will be gearing our initial lessons towards the use of a free image editing app named Paint(dot)Net so that everyone can participate before moving into more advanced meme techniques with paid software.

You can download the entire Paint(dot)Net app for free on the page linked below:

Free Paint.Net Download

LESSON 001: LAYERS

LESSON 002: FILE TYPES