Today I would like to share with you several type tips that I have discovered in Photoshop. Some of them you may be familiar with but maybe you’ll pick up a new technique to speed up your workflow. I always love it when I can learn something new in Photoshop – seems like there are always many ways to do the same thing in this program and sometimes I find that I am not using the most efficient technique. So while I admit there may be more ways to reach the results I am sharing, I did want to share with you some of the tips that work for me. I have tried these tips in both PSE and PS.

First of all did you know that you can change the preview of size of the fonts in Photoshop? I admit that often I am not sure what the name of the font is that I want to use on a project. As you scroll through the drop down menu of the fonts you have available in Photoshop, it can be quite tedious – especially if your preview is small. If you enlarge the preview you can more easily see what fonts you have available. You can set the preview to any of the following sizes you like:
Small
Medium
Large
Extra Large
Huge
To change these settings follow these simple steps:
1. From the drop down “Edit” menu, Select preferences > type.

2. You will see the a little menu box for “font preview size” – click on the little drop down arrow and select the size you prefer for preview.
3. Click “OK”

Here is another tip that you might find useful as you decide what font you want to use on a project. Once you have your text on your project, you may want to see what it would look like if you use a different font. You can easily see the difference between several – or even all of your fonts, by doing the following:
1. Highlight the text on your project.
2. Highlight the font name in the menu at the top of Photoshop.
3. With both of these highlighted, simply use the up or down arrows on the keyboard to scroll through your fonts. You may also want to try using your scroll wheel on your mouse if you have one. I found that worked as well.
4. The text on your project will scroll through the different fonts as you push the arrow keys.
5. Decide what font you like best and enjoy!

Did you know that you can adjust the spacing between letters as well as between lines of text in Photoshop? Sometimes I really like the look of a certain font for a page or project I am working on but when I hit return it is to realize that the lines of text are so close together that the tails of the letters y or g get mixed with the stems of the letters d or b. Sometimes it is a problem of way too much space between lines of text which distracts from the design of my page. You can easily adjust these problems by following these simple steps:
1. With the text tool activated, highlight the text you want to adjust.
2. While holding the ALT key on a PC or Option Key on MAC, Use the up or down arrows on the keyboard to adjust the space between lines.

If your problem happens to be that the spacing between the letters of text are not to your liking, the solution is similar.
1. With the text tool activated, highlight the text you want to adjust.
2. While holding the ALT key on a PC or Option Key on MAC, Use the right or left arrows on the keyboard to adjust the space between letters.
Such easy steps to help you make the text on your pages and projects more to your liking.

I have a simple example here to show you how spacing effects the look of your text.

Here is just one more type tip I’d like to share today. In Photoshop you can select right justified, left justified or center justified for your text. Sometimes I want to achieve the look of a magazine or newsprint justification where the text is justified on both the right and left – see the layout below as an example of this style of justification.

You can justify text like this by following these steps:
1. With the text tool activated, draw a text box on your project. (This is done by left clicking the mouse and while dragging down, pulling the mouse until you create the box you desire. You then release the mouse button.)
2. You will have a blinking cursor inside the text box. Go ahead and type your text.
3. When finished typing, make sure you still have the type tool activated and a cursor blinking inside the text box.
4. Hit Control+Shift+J on a PC or Command+Shift+J on a MAC.
5. Your text will be fully justified!

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Edited:

First my deepest apology for misleading PSE users in my tutorial. I don’t know how I missed that PSE didn’t let you space lines and space between letters the way PS does. I will definately do more research before I do my next tutorial. I did a little digging and found a solution on how to adjust space between letters (kerning) in PSE.

1. From the drop down “Edit” menu, Select preferences > type.
2. Check the box that says Show Asian Text Options.
3. Restart Elements.
4. With the text tool activated, highlight the text you want to adjust.
5. Look at the top of the screen in the tool bar and there you have a new curly shape symbol.
6. Click on this new symbol and then check Mojikumi.
7. You will see a drop down menu there that you can adjust the percentage which will adjust the kerning.

Now to address how to adjust the space between lines of text in PSE.
1. At the top of the screen in the tool bar you’ll see an icon that looks like two upper case letter A’s with an arrow. This is your leading adjustment.
2. Next to the symbol you will see a drop down menu with numbers. You can adjust the space between lines of text by selecting from these numbers as you desire.

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Tags: Design House Decorators, Digital Scrapbooking, Inspiration, Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Tutorials