When it comes to text in Photoshop CS, the character palette is the place to start. You can display the character palette by choosing Window ->Character from the menu bar.
At the top left of the character palette (marked with a 1), you will see the font family drop list. If you click the small down pointing arrow, you will display a lengthy scrolling list of fonts and symbols that that you can apply to your text.
The drop list immediately to the right of the font list (marked with a 2) will allow you to set a font style (if the particular font that you choose supports it). The font styles you can choose from are Regular, Bold, and Italic, although the availability of these styles depends on the type of font you choose.
Beneath the Font drop list, you see the Font size list (marked with a 3). You can display the list by clicking the small arrow beside the data field. This list will provide options for setting the size of the text.
The list to the right of the Font size list (marked with a 4) is for leading. Leading, (pronounced correctly, it rhymes with wedding) is the space between your lines of text. You can set this manually by choosing from the list, or you can choose auto. If it is set to auto, the space between lines of text will be adjusted for you every time you start a new line.
The list below the font size list (marked with a 5) is used to set up kerning for your text. Kerning is the horizontal space between the individual letters or characters. Usually this will be set to Metrics or Optics, the two choices at the top of the list of options. The Metrics or Optics setting will use the default kerning that was designed for the particular font. If you want to change the default kerning, you can do so by clicking in between the letters of your text, and then entering a value into the field, or selecting a value from the list.
To the
right of the kerning options list (marked with a 6) is the Tracking drop
list. Tracking is also used to set the space between letters, but not on
an individual letter by letter basis like kerning. You can use the
tracking options to set the space between letters in a word for example.
The next boxes, marked with a 7 and 8 respectively, allow you to adjust text scaling. You can adjust the vertical scaling of the text by selecting it, and then entering a value in the vertical scale field. The size of the text will increase or decrease vertically only, not horizontally.
You can adjust the horizontal scaling of the text by selecting it, and then entering a value in the horizontal scale field. The size of the text will increase or decrease horizontally only, not vertically.
To adjust the colour of your text, select the letter, word, sentence, or passage that you want to change, and then click on the coloured box labelled Colour (marked with a 10) in the character palette. When you click on this box, the colour picker panel will appear on your screen.
The selected text will assume what ever colour you choose using the colour picker.
You may notice a row of capital T’s of different shapes and sizes running across the character palette near the bottom. You can use these T icons to create subscripts, superscripts, underlines, strikethroughs, faux bold, faux italics, and to make your text small capitals, or all capitals. (Faux bold and faux italics can be used to apply bold or italics styles to type fonts that not support bold or italic characters.)
If you let your mouse pointer hover over each T icon, a brief description of its function will appear in a comment box.
In the lower right of the character palette, you will see a drop list from which you can select one of the following anti-aliasing methods for your text.
Anti-aliasing is the process by which jagged edges on a graphical element are smoothed over for a better visual appearance.
If you click the small arrow at the upper right of the character palette, you will see a menu with virtually all of the same character options that are available from the palette itself, plus a few more.
You will also notice a Paragraph tab behind the Character palette. If you select this tab, you will have access to the paragraph palette options. You can use these options to adjust the indentation, and justification (left, center, and right) of your paragraphs.
You can also click the arrow at the upper right of the paragraph palette to display a menu that will provide access to justification and hyphenation dialog boxes, and other options to control your paragraph structure.
A number of the options in the character palette, like font type, font size, font style, and colour, are also available in the options bar when you select the Type tool.
If you add some text to an image, and then right click on the text, a menu will appear with options for editing the text. These options even include a spell checker.
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