Graphics Zone - Spaced Out

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Spaced Out

by John Hilton, Adult NetSurprise

Whether you are designing a banner or a logo it's important to use the correct spacing for your lettering.

Photoshop uses 'tracking' to alter the spaces between the letters. It gives an equal amount of spacing between each letter and is therefore a basic tool. 'tracking' gives an even space between the two nearest points so the space between two OO's will result in a space that "looks" bigger to the eye than the space between two II's. Often it's neccessary to alter the spacing between specific letters (kerning) to make things look right and the best way to do this is by manually moving them further apart or closer together.

To alter the 'tracking' highlight the lettering and click on the Palettes button in the tool options bar. The diagram gives examples of how different 'tracking' spacings look. Notice that you can use decimal points. This can often be very handy with small lettering. With some fonts it's necessary to use a negative value for your spacing. To do this you simply type a - before the numbers.

To adjust the kerning manually, rasterize the lettering and use a Marquee Tool to surround each chosen letter and nudge with the arrow keys until it looks right. In the 'Manual' example I only adjusted the space between the p and the a. This simple adjustment improved the overall look.