Learning about Kerning: Photoshop 5.0's Type Tool

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Mar 30, 1999

Photoshop is where it's at.

Whether you're a 3D animator or a cartoon illustrator, a videographer or a pro photographer, it's a good bet that Adobe Photoshop is among your most frequently used tools. The universal standard for image manipulation software, Photoshop has long been the package of choice among digital graphic designers everywhere, and is widely used in the home office as well, despite its steep price. Version 5.0, introduced last year, brings with it some very interesting and innovative new features, most notably a vastly improved type tool. Mastery of type is one of the most valuable skills that a graphic designer can have, so I think we would do well to take a good look at Photoshop 5.0's type tool and discover what makes it tick.

Fully editable Text Layers
The first thing that a veteran Photoshop user will notice about the new type tool is that it creates editable layers. This means that once a text layer is created, the user can go back at any time and change the text and also change its formatting, color, size, etc. as often as desired. The changes can be previewed in real time, taking place within the document as they are changed in the text window. Text layers can not be drawn into, merged, or have filters applied to them until they are rendered. Rendering a layer (on the toolbar go to Layer > Type > Render Layer) turns it into a normal layer and the text can then no longer be changed or edited.

Tracking, Kerning... what's it all mean?
Photoshop 5.0 gives users much greater control over the formatting of their text, right down to the space between each letter. Let's take a gander at the text tool dialog box and figure out what all these complicated words mean.

When you apply the type tool (or the type mask tool, which creates a floating selection in the shape of your text) to a document, the Type Tool dialog box pops up:

Text can then be typed or pasted directly into the large text field at the bottom, and if the preview box is checked the text will appear in the working document as it is created. Unlike in earlier versions of Photoshop, changing font or color values in the dialog will not automatically change all of the text; rather, the desired text must first be highlighted as in a word processing program. This allows users to create a text layer that contains text of different fonts, sizes, and colors as opposed to just one uniform value in Photoshop 4.0 and earlier.

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The copyright of the article Learning about Kerning: Photoshop 5.0's Type Tool in Graphics/Images is owned by Brendan Middleton. Permission to republish Learning about Kerning: Photoshop 5.0's Type Tool in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.