How to place text over an image

Question

I want to make this for my cover page, to write over an image. Any advice will be very well received.

Answer 1

It is possible to arrive at a fairly simple solution by the use of tikz:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[papersize={11in,8.5in},margin=0in]{geometry}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{calc}

\parindent=0pt

\begin{document}

\begin{tikzpicture}%
\node[anchor=south west, inner sep=0] (X) at (0,0){\includegraphics[width=10in]{ScreenShot}};%
\begin{scope}[x={(X.south east)},y={(X.north west)}]%
%% This makes all measurements with no units into fractions of the width
%% and height of the graphic contained in the node.
\fill[fill = white,fill opacity=0.6] ($(X.south west) + (0,1in)$) rectangle ($(X.north east) - (0,1in)$);%
\node[text width=10in] (Z) at (0.5,0.5) {%
    \sffamily\centering\Huge Clustering the interstellar medium\\[5pt]
  \normalsize Data Mining and Machine Learning in Astronomy\\[15pt]
  \large Andrea Hidalgo\par%
};
\end{scope}%
\end{tikzpicture}

\end{document}

I read your question and have supplied another example, this time with considerable comments in the TeX file. Hope this helps.

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{calc}

\parindent=0pt

\begin{document}

\thispagestyle{empty}

\noindent\begin{tikzpicture}%
%% Size the graphic as you require (in this case \textwidth):
\node[anchor=south west, inner sep=0] (X) at (0,0){\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{ScreenShot}};%
%% This makes all measurements with no units into fractions of the width
%% and height of the graphic contained in the node.
\begin{scope}[x={(X.south east)},y={(X.north west)}]%
%% Note in the following \fill command, that the coordinates of the rectangle are
%% such that its bottom is three-quarters inch from the bottom of the graphic, and its top
%% is three-quarters inch from the top of the graphic. Change this to suit.
%% You can change the opacity as well: As it approaches 1.0 the rectangle becomes more opaque.
\fill[fill = white,fill opacity=0.7] ($(X.south west) + (0,0.75in)$) rectangle ($(X.north east) - (0,0.75in)$);%
%% The coordinates of the \node -- (0.5,0.5) -- containing the text place the text at the
%% horizontal and vertical center of the graphic.
%% You can change this to suit.
%% Also note that the width of the graphic and the width of the node containing
%% the text should be the same.
\node[text width=\textwidth] (Z) at (0.5,0.5) {%
    \sffamily\centering\Large Clustering the interstellar medium\\[5pt]
  \normalsize Data Mining and Machine Learning in Astronomy\\[5pt]
  \large Andrea Hidalgo\par%
};
\end{scope}%
\end{tikzpicture}

\end{document}

Whether the graphic itself is landscape or not depends entirely on the shape of the graphic.

Answer 2

You could try overpic.sty:

\documentclass[a4paper]{scrbook}    
\usepackage[textwidth=10cm]{geometry}
\usepackage[abs]{overpic}
\usepackage{graphicx,color,transparent}

\begin{document}
\begin{center}
  \begin{overpic}[unit=1mm,tics=10,width=1.0\linewidth]{example-image-a}
    \put(50,30){%
      \makebox[0pt]{%
        \transparent{0.5}%
        \colorbox[rgb]{0,0,1}{%
          \parbox[b]{9cm}{%
            \transparent{1}%
            \color{white}\sffamily\centering 
            {\Large\bfseries Clustering the interstellar\\ medium\par}
            \vspace{3ex}
            Data Mining and Machine Learning in Astronomy\par
            \vspace{1ex}
            \large Andrea Hidalgo
          }%
        }%
      }%
    }%
  \end{overpic}
\end{center}
\end{document}

Answer 3

To overlay the elements, I use stacks. To obtain "transparancy", just overlay a clipped version of the original image, using the decodearray parameter for color reinterpretation.

\documentclass[a4paper]{article}
\usepackage{graphicx,stackengine,trimclip}

\begin{document}
\noindent%
\stackinset{c}{}{c}{}{%
 \parbox{.8\textwidth}{\sffamily\centering\Huge Clustering the interstellar medium\\[5pt]
  \normalsize Data Mining and Machine Learning in Astronomy\\[15pt]
  \large Andrea Hidalgo%
  }%
}{%
  \stackinset{c}{}{c}{}{%
    \clipbox{0pt 50pt 0pt 50pt}{%
    \includegraphics[decodearray={0.5 1},width=\textwidth,]{example-image-A.jpg}%
    }%
  }{%
    \noindent\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{example-image-A}%
  }%
}
\end{document}

I have added color example below, which requires more parameters in the decodearray. Here, I use launch.jpg which the reader should rename to a color image of his/her own, requiring 6 decode parameters (a cmyk image would require 8 parameters)

\documentclass[a4paper]{article}
\usepackage{graphicx,stackengine,trimclip}
\begin{document}
\noindent%
\stackinset{c}{}{c}{}{%
 \parbox{.8\textwidth}{\sffamily\centering\Huge Clustering the interstellar medium\\[5pt]
  \normalsize Data Mining and Machine Learning in Astronomy\\[15pt]
  \large Andrea Hidalgo%
  }%
}{%
  \stackinset{c}{}{c}{}{%
    \clipbox{0pt 50pt 0pt 50pt}{%
    \includegraphics[decodearray={0.2 1 0.3 1 0.7 1},width=\textwidth,]{launch}%
    }%
  }{%
    \noindent\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{launch}%
  }%
}
\end{document}

---

FOLLOW UP:

To overcome the margins, one can use various tricks. Here, I use \noindent\makebox[\textwidth]{something that is paperwidth wide} to overcome the horizontal margin and \smash{\raisebox{-length}{something that is vertically large}} to overcome the vertical margins.

\documentclass[a4paper,landscape]{article}
\usepackage{graphicx,stackengine,trimclip}
\thispagestyle{empty}
\begin{document}
\noindent%
\smash{\raisebox{-.73\paperheight}{\makebox[\textwidth]{\stackinset{c}{}{c}{}{%
 \parbox{.8\textwidth}{\sffamily\centering\Huge Clustering the interstellar medium\\[5pt]
  \normalsize Data Mining and Machine Learning in Astronomy\\[15pt]
  \large Andrea Hidalgo%
  }%
}{%
  \stackinset{c}{}{c}{}{%
    \clipbox{0pt 50pt 0pt 50pt}{%
    \includegraphics[decodearray={0.2 1 0.3 1 0.7 1},width=\paperwidth,]{launch}%
    }%
  }{%
    \noindent\includegraphics[width=\paperwidth]{launch}%
  }%
}}}}
\end{document}