Photoshop has many different options available for editing
digital type. You can create some pretty spiffy effects that
something like Word or Notepad would never be able to give
you. This tutorial was created using Adobe Photoshop 7.0 on
a mac, but it also works on PC versions 5.5 - 7.0 and you
may be able to get some of the limited effects using Paint
Shop Pro or Adobe Photoshop LE.
The type tool has several options available
that will help you to customize your type. You can see these
options by selecting the tool (the large "T") in
your toolbar. The most important option is the font itself.
In the diagram above, it is labeled as the font name. Clicking
on it will give you a dropdown of all of the available fonts
on your system. Some fonts will have a style available as
well, such as bold, italic, or underlined. The size is how
large (in points) the letters are. The bigger the number,
the larger the font will appear on screen. Photoshop will
not allow you to use decimal sizes, so make sure that your
choice is always in whole numbers, If there is not the correct
font size in your dropdown, you can manually type it in yourself
and the size will be added. The last option is anti-aliasing.
This is how smoothed out your text is. If you have no antialiasing
selected your text will be pixelated. I find that the best
option is "crisp" because it avoids the pixels,
but does not get blurry.
I can type in the text tool by clicking on the
document with it and typing in my letters "dragon".
Type creates its own layer, and this layer is special because
it is vector based instead of pixel based. This means that
you can resize larger or smaller without losing any resolution.
It also means that text is harder to edit.
By highlighting your text with the type tool
you make it active. You can then scroll through the fonts
and see what they all look like if you're not familiar. ANY
time you want to make a change to the type you will need to
highlight the letters that you want affected.
As you can see I have changed the font style
and am now changing the size. I can make these changes because
the text is highlighted. (I've said it twice and I put it
in italics, so it must be important!)
Once you have your font face and size figured
out you may want to leave it at that;However, if you want
your text to curve, buldge or warp in some way then you will
want to use the text warping tool. Highlight the text you
want to warp and click on the "T" with a curved
arrow underneath it. This will bring up a menu. From there
you can select what type of warp you want (style) and how
extreme you want it (bend) Horizontal and vertical distortion
will change the center of the warp.
Horizontal warping warps the text widthway while
the vertical selection will apply the affect heighway. Try
different styles to get the effect that you want.
Ready for Part 2?
All content © J "NeonDragon"
Peffer.
