Changing the Look of Your Type 275
Working with Vertical Text 280
When you think about all of the sophisticated photo retouching, painting, and drawing you can do in Photoshop Elements, manipulating type may not be a priority on your to-do list. However, you can create some amazing projects with the type tools, including greeting cards, posters, announcements, and invitations—and you don’t have to fire up another software application.
This chapter covers the text formatting options and special type effects you can create with Photoshop Elements. If you’ve had any experience with word processing programs, the basic text formatting options will be familiar to you. But unlike a word processor, Photoshop Elements lets you create myriad special effects, using the type warping and masking tools and layer styles.
When you use the type tools, your text is automatically placed on a new, unique layer. Since the text exists on its own layer, you can modify your text every way layers allow, including moving, applying blending modes, and changing the opacity. Also, having text on its own layer allows you to go back and edit it whenever you want.
You’ll likely want to adjust the position of your text, and this is done just as easily as moving an object on any other layer. If you want to paint on your text or apply filters or effects to it, you’ll need to simplify the layer by converting it to a standard bitmap. But remember: After a type layer has been simplified, it becomes part of the image, which means you can no longer edit the text. Fortunately, as long as you don’t close the file, the Undo History panel will let you go back to the state your type was in before it was simplified. And you can always save a separate version of your file prior to simplifying the type layer.
To add text to an image:
Your pointer changes to an I-beam, as in many other text-editing programs .
• Click to create a text insertion point. This method is perfect if you’re setting just a single line of text, or a simple two- or three-line title or heading.
• If you want to set a long text paragraph, click and drag to create a paragraph text box .
If you’ve created a paragraph text box, the text automatically flows to a new line when it bumps up against the border of the text box.
• Press the Enter key on the numeric keypad.
• Click anywhere in your image, click a panel, or click a tool on the toolbar.
A new type layer is created and is visible on the Layers panel. The layer name is the text you entered.
To edit text:
Consider changing the font size before you begin typing (which I describe shortly); 12-point text is easily lost in a high-resolution photo.
If you want to add more text to a different part of your image, simply click elsewhere in the image and start typing. The new text is added to its own separate layer.
Your image must be in grayscale or RGB mode if you want to add type to it. Elements’ two other image modes, bitmap and index, don’t support type layers.
To move text:
When you click the Move tool, your type is surrounded by a selection bounding box, allowing you to move the type as a single object anywhere on your image.
To simplify a type layer:
The layer ceases to be a type layer and the text is treated as pixels instead.
You can also move a type layer with the Type tool selected: Hold Ctrl and click the layer; then drag it into position.
When you simplify a type layer, does its icon in the Layers panel look empty? The tiny thumbnail may not appear to display your text if the type is small in relation to the full image size. Try this: Click the More drop-down menu and choose Panel Options. In the dialog that appears, click Layer Bounds in the Thumbnail Contents section, and then click OK. The layer’s thumbnail icon displays only the text, not the entire image.
You should be comfortable using the type formatting tools—font family, font style, and font size—because they’re very similar to those found in most word processing programs. You can also change the text alignment and text color. All of these options are available on the text options bar .
To change any of these attributes, you first need to select the text characters you want to change. Most of the time, you’ll want to select and apply changes to an entire line of text, but you can also select individual words or even individual characters.
To select text:
• Double-click within a word to select the whole word .
• Triple-click to select an entire line of text .
• Quadruple-click to select an entire paragraph of text .
You can select all the text on a layer without even touching the text with your pointer. Just select the type layer on the Layers panel and double-click the T icon.
To choose the font family and style:
If the font family you selected doesn’t include a particular style, you can click the Faux Bold or Faux Italic button to change the look of your text .
If you haven’t memorized the look of each and every font on your computer (and who has?), Photoshop Elements’ font family menu displays an example of each font next to its font name. You can change the size of font samples or turn the display of the samples off by choosing Edit > Preferences > Type and then using the drop-down menu in the Type Options section of the Type Preferences dialog .
To change the font size:
To change to a type size not listed on the menu, just enter a new value in the type size text field.
Quickly adjust the type size up and down using keyboard shortcuts. Just select your text and then press Ctrl+Shift+. (period) to increase the size in 2-point increments. To reduce the size of the text, press Ctrl+Shift+, (comma).
You can also adjust the type size up and down in 1- or 10-point increments. Select your text and then select the type size in the type size menu on the options bar. Next, use the up and down keys on your keypad to size the type up and down in 1-point increments. If you hold down the Shift key while pressing the up or down keys, the type will adjust in 10-point increments .
To change the default measurement unit for type, go to the Photoshop Elements Preferences and choose Units and Rulers. Here you can select among pixels, points, and millimeters (mm).
To change the line spacing:
To change to a line spacing value not listed on the menu, enter a new value in the line space text field.
To apply underline or strikethrough:
The default line spacing value for any type size (Auto) serves as a good starting point, but it’s surprising that something as simple as increasing or decreasing line spacing can have a dramatic visual impact .
If your type layer is set to a vertical orientation, the underline appears on the left side of the type.
To change the alignment:
The type shifts in relation to the origin of the line of text, or in the case of paragraph text, in relation to one side of the text box or the other. For point and click type, the origin is the place in your image where you first clicked before entering the type.
• Left Align positions the left edge of each line of type at the origin, or on the left edge of the paragraph text box.
• Center positions the center of each line of type at the origin, or in the center of the paragraph text box.
• Right Align positions the right edge of each line of type at the origin, or on the right edge of the paragraph text box.
To change the text color:
You can also change the color of all text on a text layer without selecting the text in the image window. With the Text tool selected in the Tools panel, click to select a text layer in the Layers panel to make it the active layer, then follow the procedure to change the text color.
Most of the time, you’ll use the standard Horizontal Type tool. But you can also change your type to a vertical orientation whenever you want. One of the reasons Elements includes both horizontal and vertical type is to accommodate the needs of the Asian-language versions of the product, such as Korean, Japanese, and Chinese.
To create vertical text:
The pointer changes to an I-beam.
• Click to create a text insertion point.
• Click and drag to create a paragraph text box.
If you’ve created a paragraph text box, the text automatically flows to a new line when it bumps up against the bottom of the text box.
To create and control the position of another line of vertical text, reselect the Vertical Type tool and create a separate, independent vertical type layer.
To change the orientation of the text:
The text changes to the opposite orientation: If your text is horizontal, it flips to vertical orientation—and vice versa.
If you have Asian language fonts installed on your computer and you want to use the Asian type formatting options, choose Edit > Preferences > Type and select Show Asian Text Options .
You can choose to smooth the edges of, or anti-alias, your type, just as you can with image selections as discussed in Chapter 5, “Making Selections.” In most cases, you’ll use Photoshop Elements to create fairly large, display-size text. For this reason, you’ll normally want to anti-alias your text so it doesn’t appear to be jagged .
The exception is in cases where you are using smaller font sizes, such as 14 points or less, and are planning to use the image for onscreen viewing on the Web. At smaller sizes, anti-aliasing actually makes your text less readable, and the smoothing effect looks more like blurring . Also, in the process of anti-aliasing, many more colors are generated, and not all Web browsers support all of these colors, so some unwanted color artifacts may appear around the edges of your type. By default, anti-aliasing is turned on.
To turn anti-aliasing off and on:
• Click the Anti-aliasing icon on the options bar. To reselect anti-aliasing, click the icon again .
• From the main menu, choose Layer > Type > Anti-Alias Off, or Layer > Type > Anti-Alias On.
Photoshop Elements lets you distort text easily using the Warp tool. You can choose from 15 different warping options in the Warp Text dialog. In this dialog, you can adjust the amount of the bend in the type, as well as the horizontal and vertical distortion.
Even after you’ve warped your text, it’s still completely editable, and you can make additional formatting changes to it at any time. But because the warp effect is applied to the entire type layer, you can’t warp individual characters—it’s all or nothing.
To warp text:
The Warp Text dialog appears.
To remove text warp:
As you experiment with the various warping options, your text can undergo some pretty dramatic changes. For this reason, you might want to move your text around to see how it looks in different parts of your image. Luckily, you can do this without closing the Warp Text dialog. If you move your pointer into the image area, you’ll see that it automatically changes to the Move tool so you can move your text around while adjusting the warping effect.
Sometimes the text effects you want to create are better done with a type selection, not the actual, editable type. The Horizontal and Vertical Type Mask tools let you enter text, which is automatically converted to a selection in the shape of type. Since it’s a selection, you can do everything you can do to any other selection—you can paint or fill the type or transform its geometry by skewing it or applying perspective. Unlike the previous type tools discussed, the type mask tools do not create a unique layer. The type selection appears on whichever layer is active at the time you use the tool. The bottom line: A type selection is just like any other selection, but in the shape of text.
To create a selection with the type mask tools:
The text appears reversed out of the colored mask overlay .
Your text area is selected .
You can now apply additional changes to the selection.
To fill a text selection with an image:
Be sure to position the selection over the image you want to show through the text.
Your text selection appears in its own file, with the image peeking through .
Up until the moment you commit the text, you can edit your type masks (change their font, size, line spacing, and alignment) just as you would any other line or paragraph of type.
You can move a text selection around in the image window as if it were any other selection. Once you click the Commit icon, select any of the marquee selection tools from the toolbox. Move the cursor over your text selection until it becomes the Move Selection icon. Then you can click and drag to reposition your text selection.
To apply a gradient to a text selection:
Your text appears with the gradient fill .
Since the Horizontal and Vertical Type tools create a unique text layer, you can use layer styles to make all sorts of unusual and interesting changes to your type. The significant advantage of using layer styles with your text (as opposed to using type masks) is that your text remains editable.
To apply a layer style to type:
When choosing a font, it’s a good idea to go with bolder sans-serif typefaces. This way, your type is more likely to remain readable after you’ve applied the style.
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