Text Tool

Get to know Magma's text tool and all of its settings.

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Written by Ryan Allan
Updated over a week ago

Text Tool Guide

The text tool will let you add text to your canvas for dialogue in your comics, signposts in your scene, and for briefs or feedback with your team. View the video or scroll on for the written guide.

Text Tool for desktop and mobile moved from Beta to Public on 10 Oct 2023

Add dialogue and text to your Canvas with the Text Tool.

Tap once anywhere on the Canvas to create a default-sized Text Box, or click and drag to create a custom one. You can deselect your Text Layer by pressing ESC key or tapping outside of the text box.

(If you want to set up a Keyboard Shortcut for Text Tool you can do it in Edit > Application Settings > Shortcuts.)

How to resize and move your Text Box

You can resize the boundaries of the Text Box by clicking and dragging one of the anchor points while your Text Tool is active.

To move your Text Box

  • while your Text Cursor is active and blinking in the box, hover your mouse cursor outside the Text Box and a it will change to a move cursor. You can then click and drag to move your box.

OR

  • Select your Move Tool in the left Toolbar, select your Text Layer in the Layers Panel, and then click and drag on your Canvas to move the box.

Inputting text to your Text Box

You can either type in your text directly or you can copy text from another application or browser tab. You can use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+V (on Windows) or Command+V (on MacOS) to paste your text. Text that is pasted with an unsupported font will be converted to the Montserrat typeface.

While the Text Tool is in Beta, it’s recommended that mobile users connect an external keyboard to their device, or copy text over from another application.

Firefox users may need to adjust some settings to be able to copy and paste between Text Layers in Magma while keeping the formatting which we’ve covered in this guide.

How to edit existing text

To edit an existing Text Box on your canvas:

  1. Select the Text Layer in your Layers Panel that you want to edit. You will need to be the Owner of the Layer in order to edit it;

  2. Then select your Text Tool from the left Toolbar;

  3. Click and drag over the text that you want to change, or tap inside your Text Box and use Ctrl+A shortcut to select all of the contents.

Text Tool settings

  1. Font family: Change the typeface of your text;

  2. Font style: Embolden or italicize your text;

  3. Text size: adjust the size of your text;

  4. Line height: adjust the vertical spacing of your text;

  5. Letter spacing: adjust the space between characters;

  6. Baseline shift: shift the placement of the text relative to the bottom of the line;

  7. Text styling: add bold, italic, underline or strikethrough to your text;

  8. Text alignment: align the text in your box;

  9. Text box size: adjust the size behavior of your text box;

Advanced options

  1. Justify: increases spacing between words to fit text alignment evenly;

  2. Vertical alignment: Align the text to the top, bottom or center of your text box;

  3. Horizontal and vertical scaling: scales the selected text up or down, or to the sides;

  4. Text casing: make your selected text upper- or lower-case, or title-case.

You can rasterize your text by right-clicking on the the Text Layer in your Layers Panel and then selecting Rasterize Layer.

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