Very often people need to do some outlined text and start to dig for outline fonts. This is a wrong way to go. Ok, if you are very smart :-) maybe you have noticed Outline option when typing text in Photoshop. Then when you try to stroke it it makes very blurry outline that is not needed usually. The way to make some good solid outline is following.
Start a new RGB image, type some text using type tool, Select>Save Selection and then hit Delete key to erase your text from the RGB channel. Bring up Channels palette if you dont have it yet, and switch to channel #4. Here do Select>Load Selection and load #4. Fill it with black and Edit>Stroke... Here use default settings, only change thickness of the outline (I used 2 in the header of this page). Now switch to channel RGB and Select>Load Selection.. #4. Hola! You can fill it with whatever you want, color or texture for example.

BONUS!. Try filling selection with white, then loading it again, filling with black and pressing left arrow key once and up arrow key once.

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© 1996 Nick Ustinov.