Graphics Zone

HornyStory

Everything you wanted to know about text in Photoshop

by BarryHilton, Adult NetSurprise

In this tutorial we'll look at working with text in Photoshop 6... We are using three option menues in Photoshop, so go to the Window menu at the top of the screen and select 'Show Options', 'Show Character' and 'Show Paragraph' if they are hidden.

We'll start with the three basic text alignment options, Left, Center and Right. In each you need to hit 'Return' on your keyboard to start a new line of text, for example if you are using Left alignment your new line will start on the left.

You can have different alignments on each line of your text too, click and drag, highlighting the line you want to alter, then click the relevant button on the Options Menu.

You can also alter many different aspects of letters or words in your text, giving completely different looks, even when using the same font. By highlighting a word or character and clicking on the 'Color Box' on the Options Menu you can alter the color of any character in your text, like in our example below. If you want to do a lot of characters the same, set up your Foreground Color on the main Tool Menu first, then after you select the 'Color Box' on the Options Menu, just click on your Foreground color and it'll select the same color each time!

The next set of options can be found on the 'Character Menu'... Using this method (highlighting text you want to change), you can also change the text size in pixels (Size in Pixels don't need to be whole numbers, you can use 19.5, for example), or if you prefer you can edit how the current font is displayed by changing it's Height or Width in % or it's original size... 200% will be twice as big as the standard font.

You can also alter the spacing between letters by using the AV <-> option, either closer together or further apart. This is most useful in two ways, firstly, when spacing out text to go under a logo or image and wou want the whole word taking up more space or secondly, when two characters look wrong, like the spacing between a T and an A... the T will look further away than some other characters.

Now, we'll explore some of the other options hidden away on the 'Characters Menu', if you click the little arrow in the top right corner a new menu will pop-up with a whole bunch of different effects! The 'Faux Bold' option is great when the font you're using doesn't have a 'Bold' variant itself... by selecting 'Faux Bold' your text will look bold like in our example below...

'Faux Italic' works in the same way as 'Faux Bold' but makes your text italic! 'Small Caps' is also very useful, just type your text as usual, using lowercase and captial letters... click 'Small Caps' and all your lowercase letters will change into little capital characters! Or, using 'All Caps' will change whatever you have typed into all capital letters.

The 'Superscript' and 'Subscript' options produce small text either at the top of your line or at the bottom. This is useful for a 'copyright' or 'tm' symbol or to annotate your current line of text.

Continueing down this menu we also have 'Underline' for underlining your text and 'Strikethrough' which adds a line through the middle of your text.

Going back to the main Character Menu, you can alter the spacing of your lines of text too. By altering this (A^A), when you hit 'Return' on your keyboard, you'll know exactly where your new line will start. You will need to alter this often as each font is spaced differently, this is very important for setting out text on your page.

By highlighting characters or words you can also alter the font too! Your single text can contain as may different fonts as you have characters! You may find you'll have to alter the spacing of the lines and characters as all the fonts use a different value.

The next set of formatting options involve the 'Paragraph Menu'. First, you'll need to draw a text box (you can alter the size later by the 'handles at the sides and corners), using the Text tool, click and drag your text box to the size you want! Then when you type text it will automatically start a new line when it reaches the edge of your box and by pressing 'Return' on your keyboard you can set up different Paragraph's like in a book!

In addition to the three basic text alignments (Left, Center and Middle) which have a 'rough' edge wher ethe text isn't aligned, you can also use four Justified options. These make all lines stretch right across your text box like in a newpaper column (altering the spacing between words), with the exception of the last line in each paragraph which is handled differently... The options for the last line are left, centered, right or jusitied (stretching right across the text box).

Next, we'll look at the different 'Paragraph' options... An indent at the start, will produce a 'traditional' paragraph like in a book or letter... just enter a value in pixels and the first line of text will move in like in our example below.

You can also alter the spacing in pixels, both above and below each paragraph. When using this option to get a space between a paragraph... when you hit 'Return' on your keyboard your new paragraph will automatically start with a gap inserted between your last paragraph and your new paragraph.

You can also combine nearly all the options together, for example 'Faux Bold', 'Faux Italic', 'Small Caps'.

Experiment and have fun with text!