Photoshop cs5 missing manual_7

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Formatting Text Figure 14-16: Attention Goldilocks: The leading on the left is too little, the leading on the right is too much, but the leading in the middle—set to Auto—is just right (for this situation, anyway; auto leading isn’t perfect for every project). As you can see, leading can make a design statement; ask yourself which one your typography needs to make. Leading is measured in points just like text, though it includes the point size of the text itself. Leading that’s equal to the point size of text is called solid leading, which creates lines of text that almost touch (resulting in spacing that’s somewhere between what’s shown in the left and middle of Figure 14-16). Photoshop’s leading is set to Auto (unless you change it), which is approximately 120 percent of the text’s point size (see Figure 14-16, middle). For example, 10-point type has an auto leading of 12 points. In the Character panel, the leading control (labeled with two As stacked on top of each other) lives directly beneath the font style pop-up menu. You can adjust the leading of several lines of text at once or one line at a time. To adjust the leading of multiple lines of text on the same layer, select the offending Type layer in the Layers panel (there’s no need to highlight the text), and then choose a point size from the leading pop-up menu, or type directly into the text field. (Better yet, hover your cur- sor above the field’s label and use the handy scrubby cursor.) If you want to adjust the leading of a single line of text on a Type layer that contains many lines, select the text first (page 586) and then change the leading. Tip: You can also use keyboard shortcuts to change leading. Select the text and then press and hold Option (Alt on a PC) and tap the up or down arrow keys to change the leading in increments of 2 points; add � (Ctrl) to change it in increments of 10 points. To set leading back to Auto, press Shift-Option-�-A (Shift+Alt+Ctrl+A). Learning to kern To kern means to adjust the amount of space between pairs of letters. Poorly kerned (or unkerned) text looks funky and can be distracting to the reader, as you can see in Figure 14-17, top. A lack of kerning is perhaps the biggest clue that text has been set nonprofessionally (nothing exposes a typographical novice faster!). Admittedly, chapter 14: creating artistic text 605
Formatting Text the problem is more noticeable with less expensive—or free—fonts (like Frolicking Ferrets), scripts, and decoratives (especially fonts that mimic handwriting, like the one in the figure). Figure 14-17: Top: Here’s some text borrowed from a BMW motorcycle ad in a naked, unkerned state. Notice how several of the letters appear too close together? The punctuation is even worse—it’s practically in a different Zip code. Bottom: After a little kerning, the text looks normal instead of helter- skelter, so readers can focus on what the copy says instead of the weird spacing. (Get it? My hairstyl- ist is my motorcycle helmet? Oh, never mind.) Over in the Character panel, the kerning button is marked by the letters AV and two arrows pointing in opposite directions. The numbers in the kerning pop-up menu range from positive to negative; positive values increase space, and negative values de- crease space. Kerning values are measured in 1/1000 em; an em is a relative measure- ment based on the point size of the type. For example, if the type size is 12-point, 1 em equals 12 points. Since you can create type of various sizes, this measurement ensures that your kerning is always based on the type size you’re currently working with. Note: Though Photoshop tries to kern text automatically, it’s best to do it manually as described here. For more on auto vs. manual kerning, see the box on page 608. Because the amount of space each letter needs (on either side) differs according to which letter comes next—an A can tuck in closer to a V than it can to an M, for example—you’ll want to kern each space individually. Press T to grab the Type tool and position the cursor in the first problem area you spot (in Figure 14-17, that’s be- tween the a and v of have—they’re way too close together). To widen the space, pick a positive value from the kerning pop-up menu or drag the scrubby cursor gently to the right (you can also type a value into the kerning field). If you want to narrow the space, pick a negative value or drag the scrubby cursor to the left. Tip: There’s a keyboard shortcut for changing kerning, but you need to place your cursor between the let- ters you want to adjust first. Press and hold Option (Alt on a PC) while tapping the left or right arrow key to change the kerning in increments of 20. Add the � key (Ctrl) to change it in increments of 100. Photoshop CS5: The Missing Manual 606
Formatting Text Track it out If you want to change the spacing between all letters in a word by the same amount, you need to adjust tracking. This adjustment is great for when you’re trying to make text fit into a small area. Also, vast amounts of tracking, as shown in the word “conference” in Figure 14-18, can be a useful design trick. Like kerning, tracking is measured in 1/1000 em. To make an adjustment, you must first select the word(s) you want to track and then trot over to the Character panel and look for the setting marked with an AV with a double-headed arrow beneath it. Pick a value from the pop-up menu, enter it manually, or use the scrubby cursor you get by hovering your cursor above the AV. Figure 14-18: Tracking is a great way to make a word fit into a small space, or fill a big space. In this example, the word “conference” has been tracked out to stretch from the g in “digital” to the last a in “camera.” Because the large amount of space be- tween the letters is uniform and obviously deliberate, it becomes a useful design element (and it’s also one of the few ways all-caps text looks good—the extra space makes it easier to read). Tip: As you might suspect, there’s a keyboard shortcut for this one too. To adjust tracking in increments of 20, select some text and then press and hold Option (Alt on a PC) while tapping the left or right arrow key. Add the � key (Ctrl) to change tracking in increments of 100. Doin’ the baseline shift Text’s baseline is the invisible line on which its letters sit. Changing it can make a character appear higher or lower than other characters on the same line (see Figure 14-19). This is called baseline shift, and you can think of it as an exaggerated super- or subscript control (as in dollar signs and degree symbols). Remember the section back on page 594 about type on a path? Baseline shift was used to scoot the text above the path. It’s also helpful when you want to create fractions, use initial caps (shown in Figure 14-19), or manually adjust characters in a decorative font. chapter 14: creating artistic text 607
Formatting Text Figure 14-19: Notice how the big, fancy D is lower than the rest of the word “diva”? That’s because its baseline shift has been decreased to –30 points. To adjust the baseline of a character, word, or phrase, select the text you want to tweak and then head to the Character panel (if you don’t select anything, the adjust- ment will be applied to the next thing you type). Use the baseline shift setting (it’s marked with a big A and little a) to move the text up or down by picking a positive or negative value (respectively) from the pop-up menu, by entering a value manually, or by using the scrubby cursor. Tip: Once you’ve selected some text, press Shift-Option (Shift+Alt on a PC) while tapping either the up or down arrow on your keyboard to shift the baseline in increments of 2 points. Add the � key (Ctrl) to shift it in increments of 10 points. poWeR USeRS’ CLINIC Auto vs. Manual Kerning However, some fonts contain little or no info about kern Ever helpful, Photoshop tries to kern text for you. Perched pairs, but you won’t know that until you start typing. So, at the top of the kerning pop-up menu in the Character if the kerning looks really bad, Adobe recommends that panel are two auto-kerning methods: Metrics and Optical. you manually switch to optical kerning, where Photoshop Metrics kerning is the most common method. It tells Photo- adjusts the space according to characters’ shapes instead. shop to adjust the space between letters according to their Optical kerning is also helpful when you use more than one kern pairs—the amount of spacing between letter pairs (like font (or font size) in a single word. Tr, To, Ta, and so on) that the designer specified when The best method of all, though, is to kern text manually as creating the font. Photoshop applies metrics kerning auto- described on page 605. It takes more time, but the results matically anytime you create or import text (unless you’ve are well worth it. changed this menu’s setting). Photoshop CS5: The Missing Manual 608
Formatting Text Other character options The Character panel is chock-full of other formatting controls. Just remember that, to apply any of the formatting discussed in this section, you first have to select some text. As shown in Figure 14-15 (page 604), the Character panel is where you can turn on faux styles (page 582), like bold and italic (they’re not built into the font, but faked by Photoshop instead). Feel free to use faux styles if you’re creating a piece for online use or at-home printing, but it’s best to stay away from the faux stuff if the project is bound for a professional printer, as they can cause unexpected results. Problems include jagged text (due to rasterization); characters that refuse to print (which will cause Photoshop to substitute another font); or a PostScript error, which can halt printing altogether. Among the other styles offered by the Character panel for your formatting pleasure are underline (which places a line under the text), and strikethrough (which places a line through the text). Tip: The keyboard shortcut for bolding text (after it’s selected) is Shift-�-B (Shift+Ctrl+B on a PC), for italicizing, it’s Shift-�-I (Shift+Ctrl+I), for underlining it’s Shift-�-U (Shift+Ctrl+U), and for adding a strike- through, it’s �-Shift-Ctrl-? (Ctrl+Shift+?). Whew! The other options in the Character panel are: • Horizontal/Vertical Scale. These two settings (which stretch or shrink text horizontally or vertically) have the power to squish, cram, and spread type to within an inch of its life, rendering it utterly unreadable and unrecognizable, so use these options at your own risk! If you’re trying to save space, a better solution is to adjust kerning or tracking (or both). If you’re trying to fill space, increase the type size or tracking instead. Tip: If you’ve played around with the scale of your text, you can instantly get it back to normal with the flick of a keyboard shortcut. Reset the vertical scale to 100 percent by selecting your text and then pressing Shift-Option-�-X (Shift+Alt+Ctrl+X on a PC), or reset the horizontal scale to 100 percent by pressing Shift- �-X (Shift+Ctrl+X). • All Caps/Small Caps. If you need to switch lowercase text to uppercase, just select the text and then press the All Caps button (marked with TT). But keep in mind that, unless you’re creating a small amount of text and perhaps tracking it out as shown in Figure 14-18, using all caps is a bad idea. They’re extremely hard to read because the words all take on the same blocky shape. Besides, they tend to insinuate screaming (LIKE THIS), and that’s not very reader friendly. The Small Caps button (marked with a big T and a smaller T) isn’t much better chapter 14: creating artistic text 609
Formatting Text as it creates smaller versions of the same, hard-to-read all caps. The keyboard shortcut for all caps is Shift-�-K (Shift+Ctrl+K on a PC); for small caps, it’s Shift-�-H (Shift+Ctrl+H). • Super and Subscript. The Superscript and Subscript buttons cause the base- line and point size of the selected character(s) to change. (If you don’t have any text selected, the next character you type will be superscript or subscript.) Superscript increases the baseline shift so the character sits above other text in the same line (great for trademark symbols such as ™ and ®), while subscript decreases the baseline shift so the character sits below other text (perfect for footnotes and scientific or mathematical text). Tip: The keyboard shortcut for superscript (which you can use after selecting text) is �-Shift-plus (Ctrl+Shift+plus on a PC). For subscript, press �-Shift-Option-plus (Ctrl+Shift+Alt+plus). • Language. The language pop-up menu at the bottom of the Character panel won’t translate text for you; it merely means that Photoshop will adjust spell checks and hyphenation to suit the selected language. The 40 or so choices in- clude everything from Bulgarian to Ukrainian. (The box on page 600 has info on spell checking.) • Anti-Aliasing. The Character panel’s anti-aliasing control (in the lower-right corner of the panel) works just like the anti-aliasing control on the Options bar, described on page 602. But wait—that’s not all! The Character panel has even more settings hidden in its menu, and they’re all covered in the next few pages. Orienting text The Character panel is jam-packed with formatting options, and even though Adobe managed to cram an astonishing amount of stuff into this one panel, they couldn’t fit everything. The solution was to stuff the remaining features into a menu tucked away in the upper-right corner of the Character panel (circled in Figure 14-20). When you open it, Photoshop unveils a long list of options that you won’t use all that often, but they occasionally come in handy. The first couple of options determine how text is oriented (the direction in which it’s headed): • Change Text Orientation. This menu item lets you switch horizontally-aligned text to vertical, and vice versa. Just select the Type layer you want to swap, not the text itself. Photoshop CS5: The Missing Manual 610
Formatting Text Figure 14-20: To open the Character panel’s menu, click the but- ton circled here. This menu also unlocks the secret typographic extras of Open- Type fonts (shown here in its expanded view), which are discussed in the fol- lowing pages. Just for fun, try selecting some text and then choose each option to see if it has any effect! • Standard Vertical Roman Alignment. This is a fun one, though it works only on vertical type. Instead of the letters flowing from top to bottom, perched atop each other, they’ll flow from left to right as if they were turned on their side. (Picture the word “Vertical” back in Figure 14-5 [page 584] lain down on its side.) Another way to create this effect is to use the Free Transform tool (page 95) to spin the type around 90 degrees. Alternate ligatures and other fancy flourishes These goodies are reserved for OpenType fonts only (PostScript and TrueType fonts don’t have them). As discussed on page 579, this format lets font designers include alternative character designs and all manner of glyphs into a font. Some have alter- nate ligatures (two or more characters that have been designed into one for better flow—like an fi or fl combination), fancy flourishes, a whole set of ornaments, and more. These embellishments are perfect for creating fancy initial caps, formatting numbers, and for adding a bit of typographic pizzazz, as shown in Figure 14-21. Choose OpenType from the Character panel’s menu and Photoshop displays the extras in yet another menu (shown in Figure 14-20). Be aware, though, that some OpenType fonts have extras and some don’t; if one of the menu items is grayed out, that means it doesn’t exist in that particular font. Here’s a quick rundown of what you might encounter in the OpenType menu: • Standard Ligatures are alternate character designs for certain letter combina- tions that tend to touch—like fi, fl, ff, ffi, and ffl. chapter 14: creating artistic text 611
Formatting Text Figure 14-21: The top line of text is in standard Adios Script Pro, a truly gorgeous OpenType font. The middle line was created using Contextual Alternates, which summons alternate letter designs depending upon where the letter falls within a word. The last line was created using the extra-flourishy Swash option. • Contextual Alternates substitutes certain letterforms for others that join to- gether more fluidly. This option is common on script fonts because it makes the letters look like cursive handwriting. • Discretionary Ligatures are replacements for letter pairs like ct, st, and ft. They tend to have a bit more flourish than their standard ligature counterparts. • Swash will substitute a standard character for one with an exaggerated stroke (think calligraphy). • Oldstyle prompts Photoshop to use smaller numerals than normal; some even sit below the baseline (page 607) so they blend more smoothly into the flow of text. Use this option when you want your numbers to appear more elegant, but not when numbers need to line up in a stack, as in an annual report. • Stylistic Alternates are characters that have extra bits of decoration here and there, as shown at the bottom of Figure 14-21. They’re for your visual pleasure only (and, of course, that of the font designer). • Titling Alternates calls to action a special set of all capitals designed to be used at large sizes, for things like titles (hence the name). • Ornaments are symbols or pictographs (like WingDings). • Ordinals decreases the size of letters appearing next to numbers and increases their baseline shift so they look like this: 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and so on. • Fractions converts a number-slash-number combination (like this: 1/2) into a real fraction (like this: ½). Photoshop CS5: The Missing Manual 612
Formatting Text To apply the special OpenType features to existing text, you have to select the text using one of the methods described on page 586 and then choose an item from the OpenType menu. If you don’t have any text selected, Photoshop will apply the feature to the next character you type. Fractional widths Also in the Character panel’s menu, the fractional widths command rounds char- acter widths to the nearest part of a pixel instead of the normal whole pixel. This setting is automatically turned on because it usually tightens text spacing, making it more visually pleasing (like kerning, discussed on page 605). However, Adobe recommends turning this option off if you’re working with anything smaller than 20-point text because the tighter spacing can make small text hard to read. When it’s turned off, Photoshop uses whole-pixel spacing, which gives each character a bit more breathing room and keeps them from running into each other. Note: You can’t apply the fractional widths command to individual characters; it’s an all-or-nothing, “everything on the Type layer is affected” kind of thing. To use whole-pixel increments for the entire docu- ment, choose System Layout (explained next) from the Character panel’s menu. System Layout The System Layout option will revert your text to the way your particular operating system displays it—similar to what you might see in TextEdit on a Mac or WordPad on a PC. It switches character widths to whole pixels (as discussed in the previous section) and turns off anti-aliasing (page 602). This is a good option to use when designing text for the Web, because the extra space and letter sharpness makes super small text a little easier to read. No Break When it comes to hyphenation, some words are meant to be broken and some aren’t (as shown in Figure 14-22). To prevent such typographical gaffes from happening to you, select the word(s) you want to keep together and then select No Break from the Character panel’s menu. This forces Photoshop to reflow the text so the word doesn’t end up sliced in two. For more on hyphenation, see page 616. Reset Character If you’ve gone a bit overboard with formatting and want to return the formatted text to its original glory, select the text and then choose Reset Character from the Character panel’s menu. If you don’t have an active text selection, the newly restored character settings will affect the next thing you type. chapter 14: creating artistic text 613
Formatting Text Figure 14-22: This is what happens when good hyphenation goes bad. The fix is to highlight the offending word and choose No Break from the Character panel’s menu. Close and Close Tab Group Close and Close Tab Group were new in Photoshop CS4. Choose Close to make the currently active panel disappear (like the Character panel), or Close Tab Group to make a whole group of related panels disappear (both the Character and Paragraph panels, for example). See Chapter 1 for more on panels and docks. The Paragraph Panel The Paragraph panel, shown in Figure 14-23, doesn’t have anywhere near the number of options as the Character panel, though that doesn’t make them any less important. Paragraph formatting controls alignment, hyphenation, justification, indentation, and spacing. Read on for a full discussion of each. Not one to be left out, the Paragraph panel also has a menu containing features that just wouldn’t fit anywhere else (Figure 14-24); they’re discussed in the following pages. Photoshop CS5: The Missing Manual 614
Formatting Text Figure 14-23: Justify all You can apply the Paragraph Justify last right panel’s formatting options to one Justify last centered or more paragraphs of text. Justify last left Paragraph panel dock Indent left margin Indent right margin Indent first line Add space after paragraph Add space before paragraph Figure 14-24: You can open the Paragraph panel’s menu by clicking the button in the upper-right corner of the panel (circled). Just like the Character panel, any changes you make in the Paragraph panel remain until you change them back. If you want to restore the settings (or your text) to their original form, choose Reset Paragraph from the panel’s menu. Aligning text Alignment gives readers’ eyes a hard edge to follow as they read through text, with the edge itself forming an invisible line that connects items on a page. The basic alignment types are left, center, and right, and picking the correct one for your docu- ment can make it look stronger, cleaner, and more dramatic. So which alignment should you choose? It depends on what you’re going for. Here are a few guidelines: • Use left alignment for big blocks of text. Newspapers, books, and magazines (which should not be created in Photoshop, mind you) usually stick with left alignment because it’s the easiest to read. Unless you tell it otherwise, Photo- shop will left-align everything. • Use centered alignment for formal situations. There’s a reason the copy in every graduation and wedding announcement you’ve ever seen is centered—it conveys a feeling of formality and elegance. So unless you live on Pennsylvania Avenue, resist the urge to center the copy on your next yard sale flyer. chapter 14: creating artistic text 615
Formatting Text • Use right alignment for small blocks of text or numbers. Right alignment can make text stand out because it’s unusual and therefore draws attention. Bear in mind, though, that it’s harder to read than left alignment, meaning you’ll want to save it for relatively small chunks of text (don’t right align your next novel). However, it’s great for using on lists of numbers because it makes the decimals points (or commas) line up. Tip: With vertical type, these options align the text based on a vertical line instead of a horizontal one. So instead of left, center, or right alignment, your options are top, center, or bottom. You can align text on a single layer (or even a single line on a layer) or across multiple Type layers: • Aligning text on a single Type layer or on multiple Type layers. Feel free to use different alignments on lines of text on the same Type layer. First, activate the Type tool and the Type layer you want to work on. If you want to align a single line of text, click anywhere within that line and then press the appropriate alignment button in the Options bar or the Paragraph panel. To align all the text on that layer, select it using one of the methods described on page 586, and then click an alignment button. To align the text on several Type layers, select the layers by Shift- or �-clicking (Ctrl-clicking on a PC) to the right of the layers’ thumbnails and then clicking an alignment button. • Aligning Type layers themselves. If you need to align the left edge of text across several layers, you use a whole different set of alignment tools. Select the offend- ing layers as described in the previous bullet point, and then press V to grab the Move tool (which makes sense because in this case, the Type layers will move) and poof!—a whole slew of alignment tools appears in the Options bar. Click the one you want to apply and the selected layers dutifully jump to the left, right, or center. These alignment tools are covered more fully on page 96. Hyphenation and justification Known to page-layout pros as H&J, these controls work together to spread para- graph text so that both the left and right edges are perfectly straight, or justified. (The text in most magazines, newspapers, and books—including this one—is justified.) They also determine how the words are sliced and diced (hyphenated) in order to make them fit within a text box or to make the margins perfectly straight. Note: Hyphenation and justification work only on paragraph text, not point text (page 584 explains the difference). Photoshop CS5: The Missing Manual 616
Formatting Text Photoshop’s hyphenation feature is automatically turned on, but you can turn it off using the checkbox at the bottom of the Paragraph panel, or by selecting the text and pressing �-Shift-Option-H (Ctrl+Shift+Alt+H on a PC). However, you have to turn justification on manually by selecting one of the following options: • Justify last left. This setting spreads text so that the left and right edges are perfectly straight (even on both sides), with the last line of the paragraph left aligned (meaning it doesn’t reach across to the right margin), like the text in this book. The keyboard shortcut for this kind of justification is to select your text and then press Shift-�-J (Shift+Ctrl+J on a PC). Tip: Justification is affected by which composition method you’ve chosen. See the box on page 620 for more info. • Justify last centered. This is the same as the previous setting, but with the last line center aligned instead. • Justify last right. Same again, but with the last line right aligned. Note: If you’re working with vertical text, your justification options are justify last top, centered, and bot- tom. • Justify all. With this setting turned on, the left and right edges of text are per- fectly straight, but the last line is spread out to span the entire width of the para- graph. The results usually don’t look very good (the last line tends to be really sprawled out), but once in awhile some rebellious designer manages to pull it off, as shown in Figure 14-25. It’s unlikely you’ll ever need to adjust the H&J options, and if you do, that’s a sign you should be creating your text in another program (see the box on page 577). Nev- ertheless, you can customize hyphenation and justification through the Paragraph panel’s menu (see Figure 14-24). For the scoop on adjusting these settings, see Figure 14-26. Tip: If you don’t want a word or phrase to get hyphenated, use the No Break option over in the Character panel’s menu (see page 613). chapter 14: creating artistic text 617
Formatting Text Figure 14-25: If you want to truly tax your text, use blocked justification. This forces all the lines of text to line up vertically, even the last one. It’s really hard to make blocked text look good, though the folks at QuotableCards.com managed it quite nicely in this magnet design. Figure 14-26: Top: To get to this dialog box, select Hyphenation from the Paragraph panel’s menu (shown in Figure 14-24). Here you can specify the minimum length of words that Photoshop can break across lines, where it can break them (after how many letters), and how many consecutive lines can have hyphenated words at the end (for the best results, leave this at two). The Hyphenation Zone field controls how close to the right margin text can get before Photoshop hyphenates it. Turn off the Hyphenate Capitalized Words checkbox to make sure names and proper nouns stay intact. Bottom: Access this dialog box by choosing Justification from the Paragraph panel’s menu. This is where you control how far apart words and letters get spread when Photoshop makes the margins perfectly straight. You can also adjust how far Photoshop stretches glyphs (page 578) during the process, and specify leading (page 604). Photoshop CS5: The Missing Manual 618
Formatting Text Indenting text It should be clear by now that Photoshop is no word processor, so don’t go rooting around expecting any serious margin controls. However, you do have some say in how much space Photoshop puts between the text and the left or right edge of a single line (for point text) or the boundaries of a text box (for paragraph text). You can find the following options in the middle of the Paragraph panel (shown back in Figure 14-23): • Indent Left Margin and Indent Right Margin. These options will scoot a line of text to the left or right by the number of points you enter here. • Indent First Line. This option indents only the first line of the paragraph. If you need to create a hanging indent—where all lines of a paragraph are indented ex- cept the first—you can do that here. (However, this is yet another indicator that you should be using page-layout software instead.) To create a hanging indent, enter a positive number (like 10) for the left indent and a negative number (like –10) for the first line indent. • Roman Hanging Punctuation. This totally awesome feature is tucked away in the Paragraph panel’s menu (circled in Figure 14-24). You can use it to make the punctuation sit outside the text margin, while the letters themselves remain perfectly aligned, as shown in Figure 14-27. (You don’t need to select any text before applying this setting.) Figure 14-27: The Roman Hanging Punctuation setting moves punctuation (in this case, the initial quotation mark) outside the margin, leaving the text perfectly aligned. Graphic designers love this option! chapter 14: creating artistic text 619
Special Text Effects poWeR USeRS’ CLINIC Photoshop’s Composition Methods • Use Single-Line if you’re dealing with just one line of “Great artists steal,” or at least that’s what Picasso and text, or if you want to hand-craft the spacing between Steve Jobs say, and the folks at Adobe clearly agree: Deep letters and lines with kerning or by inserting manual within the Paragraph panel’s menu (Figure 14-24) you’ll line breaks (carriage returns). With this method, Pho- find a couple of options snatched unabashedly from Ado- toshop composes each line individually, no matter be’s page-layout program, InDesign. how many lines your paragraph contains. Displaying text is a complicated matter. To determine how • Go with Every-Line if you’ve got more than one line of paragraph text is displayed, Photoshop takes into consider- text. Choosing this method tells Photoshop to compose ation word spacing, letter spacing, glyph spacing, and any the paragraph as a whole. The program tries to arrange hyphenation options you’ve set. With that information, it lines in such a way that it avoids nasty line breaks. This uses a complex formula to determine how lines of text are method generally creates more visually pleasing text, spaced (and broken, if necessary) in order to fit them with- in part because it makes Photoshop avoid hyphenation in the text box you’ve created. This is called composition, whenever possible. Photoshop uses this method auto- and you have two composition methods to choose from: matically unless you tell it otherwise. Space Before and After Take a peek at the headers and subheads in this book. Notice how there’s more space above them than below? This kind of spacing makes it easy for you to tell—even at a glance—that the paragraph following the header is related. That’s because the spacing itself is a visual clue: Information that is related should appear closer to- gether than information that’s not related. (In design circles, this is known as the rule of proximity.) Proper spacing makes it a lot easier for people to read a document quickly (or even just scan it) and understand how it’s organized. To adjust the spacing in your document, you could take the easy way out and add a few extra carriage returns, though chances are good that you’ll introduce too much—or too little—space. Instead, use the Paragraph panel’s Space Before and Space After options, which let you control spacing right down to the point (oh, glo- rious control, let us bow before thee!). To do that, select a Type layer and grab the Type tool by pressing T. Click anywhere in the offending line (don’t select it, just click it), and then head to the Paragraph panel and enter an amount (in points) into the Space Before or Space After field, or both. (You can also use the scrubby cursor as discussed previously.) Special Text Effects You can spice up Photoshop text in a variety of ways by adding strokes, drop shad- ows, textures, and more. You can even take a photo and place it inside of text. The great thing is that you can perform all these techniques without rasterizing the text, Photoshop CS5: The Missing Manual 620
Special Text Effects so it remains fully and gloriously editable. Read on to learn all kinds of neat ways to add a little something special to your text. Tip: Perhaps the easiest special effect of all is creating partially opaque or ghosted text. All you have to do is lower the Type layer’s opacity in the Layers panel, as explained on page 92. That’s it! Stroked Text One of the easiest ways to enhance text is to give it an outline, making it really stand out. Photoshop calls this outline a stroke, and it’s simple to add using the layer styles menu you learned about back in Chapter 3 (page 128). The following steps explain how to add a plain black stroke, as shown at the top of Figure 14-28. Tip: You might be tempted to choose Edit➝Stroke instead of following the steps below. Don’t. To use the Edit menu’s Stroke command, you have to rasterize the text first (in fact, the Stroke menu item will be grayed out if you’ve selected a Type layer, since it’s vector-based). Using Layers Styles is a much more flexible way to outline text because your text remains editable. 1. Add some text. Press T to grab the Type tool and type a word. Be sure to choose a fairly weighty font like Futura bold or Cooper (the words in Figure 14-28 are in Cooper). If the letterforms are too thin, the stroke can overpower them. Figure 14-28: Here are a few ways of stroking text with a layer style. The great thing is that, no matter what kind of stroke you create, you can edit it by double-clicking the newly added stroke style layer in the Layers panel. Top: The classic thick, black, outside stroke. Middle: By changing the Stroke Type to Gradient and the Style to Shape Burst, you can introduce more than one color to the stroke, which gives it a bit of flair. This gradient stroke was made with the Silver preset from the Metal set (see page 363 for more on loading gradients). Bottom: By using the Gradient Editor (page 623) to create a custom solid gra- dient, you can make multi-stroked text, as explained in the next section. chapter 14: creating artistic text 621
Special Text Effects 2. Choose Stroke from the Layer Style menu at the bottom of the Layers panel. Photoshop pops open the Layer Style dialog box and displays the many options for adding a stroke to your text. 3. Enter a stroke width. In the Size field, enter a pixel width (or use the slider). Use a lower number for a thin stroke and a larger number for something more substantial (in Figure 14-28, top, the size was set to 8). 4. Pick Outside from the Position menu. Using Outside works well for text because it tells Photoshop to put the stroke on the outside of the character (as opposed to the inside where it takes up more space, or straddling the character’s edge, as is the case with a Center position). Leave the blend mode set to Normal and the opacity at 100 percent. 5. Choose Color from the Fill Type pop-up menu. Photoshop assumes you want to fill the stroke with color (as opposed to a gra- dient, as explained in the next section) and it automatically chooses black. To create a standard black stroke, as shown at the top of Figure 14-28, leave this setting alone. If you want to pick something else, click the little color swatch and choose something else from the resulting Color Picker. 6. When you’re finished, click OK to close the Layer Style dialog box and admire your newly stroked text. You can edit the new stroke at any time by double-clicking the new stroke style layer in the Layers panel. Tip: To produce hollow text, apply a Stroke layer style and then lower the Type layer’s Fill opacity (page 92) to 0%. The stroke will still be visible, but everything inside the stroke will vanish. The rare multi-stroked text effect If you want to really make your text stand out—like in a comic book situation— try giving it more than one stroke, like the Shazam at the bottom of Figure 14-28. This technique is rewarding, but requires a few more steps than the plain ol’ single- stroked version in the previous section. Begin with steps 1 and 2 for creating stroked text, and then proceed as follows: 1. In the Layer Style dialog box, set the Fill Type field to Gradient and the Style menu to Shape Burst, as shown in Figure 14-29, top. Using a gradient lets you add a multi-colored stroke to the text, though you’ll need to do some gradient editing first. Choosing Shape Burst as the gradient Photoshop CS5: The Missing Manual 622
Special Text Effects style makes the gradient stroke appear on the outside of the text only. You don’t have to select a gradient style before editing the gradient; doing so just lets you see what you’re creating. 2. Open the Gradient Editor (page 365) and choose a new a gradient. To open the Gradient Editor, shown in Figure 14-29, bottom, click the rectan- gular gradient preview. In the resulting dialog box, click once to use one of the handy preset swatches that appear at the top (see page 363 for more on loading and editing gradients). If you want to get really creative, proceed to the next step. If not, skip to step 4. Figure 14-29: Click to open Gradient Editor These are the settings that were used on the Starship Enterprise…er, that were used to create the multicol- ored strokes around Shazam in Figure 14-28. Top: Once you get the hang of editing gradients, you can simulate space between the color strokes by creating a solid gradient that goes from black to white (or whatever your document’s background color is) to green and then back to white. Note that the color appearing closest to the text (white in this case) is the last color in the gradient preview shown here. Bottom: To make your gradi- ent match this one, you’ll need to create six color stops. Place two at the 25% mark (black with white on top), two at 50% (white with green on top), and two more at 75% (green with white on top). As shown here, you’ll see only three color stops when you’re finished because the other three will Color stop Color well Controls location of color stop be directly underneath them. chapter 14: creating artistic text 623
Special Text Effects 3. Choose Solid as the Gradient Type and edit the individual color stops. To edit one of the gradient’s colors, click the tiny color stop (circled in Figure 14-29) and then click the color well that appears below it (or just double-click the color stop itself). Move the color stops around by dragging or by entering a number in the position field. You can create the illusion of space between the color strokes by introducing white into the gradient, as shown in Figure 14-29. 4. When the preview looks good, click OK in the Gradient Editor, and then click OK again to close the Layer Style dialog box. Pretty nifty, ’eh? Once again, if you want to edit the stroke, just double-click the stroke style layer in the Layers panel. Note: To learn how to create text that looks like it’s made out of shiny metal, head to this book’s Missing CD page a www.missingmanuals.com/cds. Texturizing Type Design trends come and go, but the distressed, tattered look has been popular for a long time. You can spot it everywhere: in movie posters, magazine ads, and book and album covers. Admittedly, it looks pretty darn good when applied to text. After all, text doesn’t always have to look new, does it? As with most effects, Photoshop gives you all kinds of ways to create a textured look. You can use a photo for the texture, run a filter (or several), or hide portions of the text using a layer mask and then paint it back with an artistic brush. Depending on your situation, one of these methods will work better for you than the rest (or at least be faster). They’re all covered in the following pages. Note: Adding a layer mask to a Type layer opens up all manner of creative possibilities, some of which appear in the following pages (there are just too darn many to include them all). However, one simple text-masking trick is a classic text fade: Simply add a layer mask to an existing Type layer and use the Gra- dient tool to fill it with a black-to-white gradient. The resulting text will appear to fade softly out of sight. See page 287 for more fun with gradient masks. Texture from a photo You can come up with some unique effects by grabbing texture from a photo and applying it to text through a layer mask. And the great thing about this technique is that it’s completely nondestructive: the Type layer remains editable. Start with an extremely busy photo—one with lots of hard lines and angles, like a picture of wood, leaves, or an interesting piece of architecture. In the steps below, you’ll use the Threshold adjustment (page 337) to morph that photo into a high-contrast texture primed for plopping into the nearest layer mask, as shown in Figure 14-30. Photoshop CS5: The Missing Manual 624