The Editor
Text & Captions
Free-standing text boxes let you add titles, captions, narration boxes, credits, or chapter headings — with full control over font, size, colour, and shadow.
On story pages, text lives inside bubbles
Text on your comic pages is added through speech bubbles, which auto-fit their own lettering. The free-standing Text tool described here appears on the Cover (for titles and captions) — and you get the same free text box, with all the controls below, whenever you Detach text from a bubble.
Placing a text box
- Open the Cover, then click the Text icon in the toolbar (or, on a story page, Detach text from a selected bubble)
- The cursor changes to a crosshair
- Click anywhere on the canvas to create a text box at that position
- Start typing immediately — the box is in edit mode as soon as it's placed
- Press Escape or click outside to exit edit mode
Editing existing text
Click a text overlay to select it, then double-click to enter edit mode. The text becomes an editable textarea. Press Escape or click outside to finish editing.
Text supports multi-line content. Press Enter for a new line inside the box.
Text properties
When a text overlay is selected, the left properties panel shows all styling options:
- Font Family — choose from a wide range of fonts, including comic-lettering, display, serif, and handwritten faces. Roboto is the default.
- Font Size — in pixels. Adjust for captions vs large titles.
- Font Weight — Normal, Bold, or Extra Bold (900). Use Extra Bold for impact titles.
- Font Style — Normal or Italic.
- Text Align — Left, Center, or Right. Center is typical for speech-style captions; left for narration boxes.
- Text Color — any hex color via color picker.
- Line Height — adjust spacing between lines for readability.
Text shadow
Text overlays support a configurable drop shadow — useful for making white text readable over light panels, or black text readable over dark areas.
- X / Y offset — shadow position relative to text
- Blur — softness of the shadow (0 = hard edge, higher = soft glow)
- Color — shadow color (usually black or dark)
- Opacity — 0–100% transparency of the shadow
White text on panels
For white text over a panel image, add a shadow: color black, blur 4–8px, opacity 80%. This makes text readable regardless of what's in the panel behind it.
Moving and resizing text boxes
Like all overlays, text boxes can be:
- Moved — drag the box body
- Resized — drag any corner handle
- Rotated — drag the rotation handle above the selection
- Deleted — press Delete/Backspace or use the delete button in the properties panel
Keyboard shortcuts in text edit mode
- Ctrl+B / Cmd+B — bold
- Ctrl+I / Cmd+I — italic
- Tab — indent
- Enter — new line
- Escape — exit edit mode
Common use cases
- Chapter title — large, centered, bold text at the top of a splash page
- Narration box — smaller left-aligned text with a colored text box behind it (place a ribbon underneath)
- Sound effects — extra bold, large, rotated text overlaid on an action panel
- Credits — small text at the bottom of the last page
- Caption strip — text placed on top of a ribbon for a classic comic caption look
Layering text over ribbons
For caption strips, place a Ribbon overlay first (for background color), then place a Text overlay on top of it. The text sits above the ribbon in z-order since it was placed last.