Clint Eastwood kind of irks me.  I like his old stuff, but Gran Torino was just too much.

I found the original movie poster using a Google image search.  I chose one that had plenty of space after Clint’s name so I could add my 2 cents.  I also made sure I didn’t choose one where I’d have to get rid of awkward text with an image behind it, because recreating images where text used to be is hard.  This poster’s black background was perfect.

My next step was finding a font similar to the one used on the poster.  During the last visual assignment I learned that installing new fonts that you find online is way easier than trying to find a good pre-installed font.  So I Googled “Gran Torino font” and found some info on a forum.  Apparently the original font isn’t free, but a nice lady posted a link to a free one that looks similar.  So i went to the site she suggested and downloaded the Gran Torino look-alike font.  Then I opened the file and pressed install.  I was ready to begin editing.

First, I opened the poster in Paint.NET and created two textboxes in new layers (one for each line I added — I wanted more control over spacing).  I then copied the color from Clint’s name on the original and used it to color the added text.  In the process of aligning the text, I figured out a pretty cool trick.  Paint.NET has a ruler at the top the screen, but it isn’t good for fine detail.  Instead I turned on a grid that you can display over images, but found that its cells were way too small to be useful.  So I got creative, and added a vertical white line in a new layer that lined up with where I wanted the end of the text to be.  I used this to get the text exactly where I wanted it.  When everything was in place, I simply deleted the vertical line layer.  I’m sure I’m not the first person to do this, but i will definitely keep doing it.