Now let’s check out the more sophisticated type settings you’ll find in the two type panels. First, the Character panel (see Figure 18.2) gives you control over kerning, tracking, and shifting the baseline, in addition to the font, style, color, and size options also found on the toolbar. There’s also a selection of type styles that aren’t related to the chosen font, such as underlining. You can set type options on the Character panel before you set the type in the image window, or you can use the panel to reformat type you’ve already entered and selected.

Figure 18.2. The Character panel gives you very fine control over the appearance of your type.

The buttons, menus, and entry fields on the Character panel give you access to your system’s installed fonts, the styles associated with those fonts, and a range of font sizes, just like the ones on the Tool Options bar. You’ve got a few more precision settings to accompany those as well.

The entry field labeled AV controls kerning, or the amount of space between each pair of adjacent letters. Most fonts, especially when they’re used in larger sizes, need some kerning to adjust the spaces between letter pairs such as AV and WA so that you don’t see a gap between the letters. The default kerning setting is Metrics, which means that Photoshop applies the kerning information built right into the font. If you don’t like the looks of this, you can override it by choosing Optical from the pop-up menu (which lets Photoshop decide how much kerning to apply) or by positioning your cursor between two letters and entering a Kerning value in the field.

Tracking is similar to kerning, in that it involves spacing between letters, but it refers to the amount of space between each pair of letters in an entire word or phrase instead of just between a single pair. Tracking can be tight (enter negative numbers) or loose (enter positive numbers). Entering 0 in the Tracking field means that no tracking is applied; the letters are spaced according to the information in their font files.

Leading (pronounced to rhyme with “bedding”) is the amount of vertical space between lines of type. If you’re setting a single word or line of type, you don’t need to worry about the leading value. As soon as you add a second line, however, leading becomes important. Because Photoshop measures leading from the baseline of a line of text to the baseline of the line above it (not the line below it), the amount of leading must be equal to or greater than the point size of the type, to keep the lines from touching or overlapping. (The baseline is the invisible line on which type sits.) If you don’t specify a leading value, Photoshop uses its default Auto setting, which is 120% of the type’s point size. So, for example, 10-point type has 12-point leading if you use Auto.

Below the Kerning and Tracking fields are entry fields for Vertical and Horizontal Scale values. Type designers hate to think that people will stretch their perfect letterforms, but in the real world, you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do. If you need to scale your type vertically (to make it taller or shorter) or horizontally (to make it wider or narrower), here’s where you go. The default value is 100%; enter a larger value to stretch the selected letters or a smaller value to squish them. You can also set a baseline shift value, which enables you to move type above and below the baseline by the specified amount.

Finally, there’s a row of buttons at the bottom of the panel for type styles, and menus for language and antialiasing. In addition to faux bold and faux italic, you can apply several other styles: all caps, small caps, superscript, subscript, underscore, and strikethrough. The language menu lets you choose fonts with special characters and makes sure that Photoshop uses the appropriate dictionary when you check spelling. (You’ll learn more about Photoshop’s spelling checker later in the hour.)

In Photoshop terms, any line followed by a carriage return is a paragraph—which isn’t exactly the classic definition, but let’s go with it for now. In the Paragraph panel, you can set options relating to an entire paragraph, such as alignment, justification, and indentation (see Figure 18.3).

Figure 18.3. On the Paragraph panel, you can set alignment and indentation for an entire paragraph.

The buttons in the upper-left corner of the panel show the possible alignments: left, centered, and right. These same buttons also appear on the Tool Options bar. Four additional buttons let you specify that the last line of a justified paragraph should align to the left, to the center, or to the right, or be spread out and fully justified. These latter options are available only if you have set paragraph text in a bounding box; they don’t apply to point type. Justified, for those not familiar with the term, means that the spacing within the type is stretched or compressed as necessary to make all the lines exactly the same length. The opposite of justified is ragged, which is what you get when each line is a different length.

The other buttons and entry fields on the Paragraph panel are for setting the amount of first-line indents, right indents, and left indents, as well as adding space before or after a paragraph. Obviously, these are most useful when you’re dealing with a block of text instead of just a few words or a line or two.

Of course, putting letters on a page—or in a Photoshop image—is easy; anyone can do it. Doing it right is another matter entirely. Typesetting is a centuries-old craft, and it has rules. Of course, today’s designers break all the rules, and that’s fine, but you should know the rules before breaking them.

First of all, thousands of typefaces are available. You’ve probably got dozens of fonts that came with your computer or with programs you’ve installed on your computer. You can buy more in CD-ROM collections, download them online, and so on. Trying out new and exciting typefaces can be so much fun that you lose sight of the goal: to communicate. When you’ve chosen a font because it looks pretty, look again and make sure you can actually read it. And follow these guidelines:

Before finalizing a design, print a sample and examine it with an eye toward making it more readable. That might be a simple matter of making the type larger or giving the lines of type more space (leading). You might need to rethink your background or add an outline around the letters. A drop shadow might help—or might make matters worse. Try combinations of different type and image treatment. And if you end up sticking with your original concept, that’s fine—sometimes you do get it right the first time.

As I mentioned earlier, you can set type in Photoshop in two ways. The first is just to click in the image where you want the type, creating a new layer and starting a line of point type. If you choose flush left alignment on the Tool Options bar or the Paragraph panel, your text heads right from the insertion point. If you select centered, Photoshop centers the words around your insertion point as you enter them. Flush right makes the text run to the left from your right-side insertion point. Figure 18.4 shows examples of each.

Figure 18.4. Text flows from the insertion point.

The other way to create type, when you have to set a lot of it or when you need to fill a specific area, is to drag out a bounding box for paragraph type. Switch to the Type tool, click it to create the corner point of the box, and then drag until the box is approximately the right size and shape (see Figure 18.5). You can go back and resize the box at any time later, so don’t worry if it’s not precisely where you want it or not quite the right size. Then enter your text by typing it or by copying and pasting from another program.

Figure 18.5. The type bounding box determines the shape of the block of text. Photoshop automatically breaks each line at the edge of the bounding box, just like a word processor.

Type always appears on a new layer. Type layers are indicated in the Layers panel by a large letter T, as you can see in Figure 18.6. They’re named according to the first new word you type, but you can change a type layer’s default name by double-clicking it and entering a new name. To edit the type itself, switch to the Type tool and click anywhere in the text. Double-clicking the T also selects all the type on that layer so that you can apply changes. If you’ve set paragraph text in a bounding box, now’s the time to adjust the leading, paragraph spacing, and indents, if any.

Figure 18.6. Each line of type occupies its own type layer.

Type layers are special in several ways: You can edit their text and insert new text or delete some. You can make changes in the text itself or in its font, style, or size. You can change the orientation of the type from horizontal to vertical. You can apply or change the type of antialiasing. But as with any layers, you can also move their contents, copy them, or change their stacking order, and you can change the layer options of a type layer as you can for a regular layer. You can use layer styles on type layers, and you can apply to type layers most of the Transform commands from the Edit menu—except Perspective and Distort. Those two commands require type layers to be rasterized before you can apply them, which brings us to our next topic.

You can do a lot with “live” type in Photoshop, but some functions require you to turn a type layer into a regular layer, one composed of image pixels instead of editable type. As you just learned, you need to do this before you can apply the Perspective or Distort commands; you also need to rasterize a type layer to transform just part of it, or to apply some of Photoshop’s many filters. Many filters can be used as smart filters, which enables you to leave your type editable; this is clearly the choice that leaves you the most leeway for making changes later (see “Applying and Editing Smart Filters” in Hour 14 for instructions). But if the filter you want to use won’t work as a smart filter, or if you’re convinced that you’re done editing the type and want to lock it down, you can rasterize it.

Rasterizing, in effect, turns type into a picture of type. After the type is rasterized, you can’t go back and edit it again. To rasterize type, click the type layer in the Layers panel to activate it and choose Layer, Rasterize. You can rasterize type layers one at a time or do all the layers at once by selecting multiple layers in the Layers panel. Or you can simply flatten the image (choose Layer, Flatten Image) if you’re sure that you’re finished making changes to the wording and no longer need the image elements to be on separate layers.

After you’ve rasterized a type layer, you can have some real fun with it. Apply filters to your heart’s content. Pour paint into selected letters, or fill them with patterns or gradients. Texturize the type. Select the type and distort it. Figure 18.7 shows just a few of the things you can do.

Figure 18.7. Filtered, distressed, and distorted type.

Arguably the most common special effect applied to type these days, a drop shadow adds dimension because it makes the object producing the shadow appear to be closer to the viewer than the background. Because this effect is used so often, apply it sparingly—but don’t let that scare you away from this simple way to make type stand out from the image that contains it.

Here are a few tips for using drop shadows most effectively:

Photoshop’s collection of layer styles includes a powerful and easy drop shadow function, along with the Glow, Bevel, Emboss, Satin, and Overlay styles, that you can apply to type layers and image layers alike. You will find all these effects in the Layer, Style submenu. Remember that you can use drop shadows and other layer styles on any object that’s on its own layer, as well as on type.

Of course, drop shadows in the real world occur not just over white or solid-color backgrounds, but over all kinds of objects. You can make a drop shadow appear to fall on a texture, an image, or anything else that strikes your fancy.

So far, you’ve seen type placed in front of an image. But another fun trick to play with type is to put an image inside it. You can do this if you’re using a nice bold typeface that leaves plenty of room for your picture (or pictures!) to show through. In this case, I’m using a photo of a cobblestone street. You could use a single photo or a collage of several photos.

First, I click the Type tool and hold down the mouse button to select the Horizontal Type Mask tool, which is used for making type-shaped selection marquees. I’ve selected a bold face called Impact; you’ve probably seen it before. To make it even bolder, I’ll click the Faux Bold button at the bottom of the Character panel, shown in Figure 18.15.

Figure 18.15. Faux Bold adds extra boldness to any character, whether it’s already bold or not. This can distort delicate letterforms, but it doesn’t do much harm to the simple, blocky characters of Impact.

When I position the cursor and start to place my letters, Photoshop enters Quick Mask mode and the image window turns pink. As I type the letters, they appear to be in a contrasting color, but when I finish typing and deselect the Type tool (or press Enter on the numeric keypad), they turn into a selection marquee and the Quick Mask goes away. Figure 18.16 shows how this looks onscreen.

Figure 18.16. The letters have turned into an active selection.

Now I can press Command-X (Mac) or Ctrl+X (Windows) and cut out the letters. I’ll create a new image file right away and paste my filled type into it for safekeeping. Figure 18.17 shows the cutout lettering.

Figure 18.17. The type is cut out of the photo.

I’m going to use these letters as part of the title slide for a keynote presentation. So I’ll use the Texturizer filter to make a nice sandstone background, tint the background with colors picked up from the original cobblestone image, and add a couple layer styles to the cut-out image: Emboss and Drop Shadow, both of which give it a three-dimensional appearance. Figure 18.18 shows the final logo, after all these tricks.

Figure 18.18. The letters jump right out.

After all this talk about drop shadows, I wouldn’t blame you if you thought that’s the only layer style Photoshop can do. Of course, you’d be mistaken. Remember, in the last example, I needed to emboss my type as well as add a drop shadow to separate the letters from the background. Here, we’ll play a little with glow styles. You can use a layer style to place a glow—really, in the case of Outer Glow, an outline—around your type. You can also apply an Inner Glow effect to make it appear as if the letters themselves are glowing. Both of these are great for adding emphasis to a piece of text or making it stand out from a busy background. Figure 18.19 shows a fairly ordinary text and photo combination that could use some of this kind of help.

Figure 18.19. The letters don’t stand out enough.

In Figure 18.20, I’ve applied a subtle Outer Glow to the letters. It’s simply another way of defining them from the background, one that’s particularly useful when a drop shadow isn’t appropriate. Other objects can glow, too, and I discuss these in more detail in the next hour, when you’ll learn how to build your own glows from scratch.

Figure 18.20. The glow helps separate the text from the background.

The Bevel and Emboss effects both produce raised type—Bevel produces sharp edges, giving the type a carved appearance, and Emboss produces letters that look raised from the surface. Figure 18.21 shows examples of both. Notice that both effects use carefully placed shadows to simulate a three-dimensional effect.

Figure 18.21. The difference between Bevel and Emboss is obvious.

You can vary the effect of these styles by changing the blending modes, by varying the opacity, and by switching around highlight and shadow colors. As always, the best way to see what the settings do is to experiment with them.

You can create metallic type in lots of ways using the layer styles, particularly the Bevel and Emboss styles. Choose appropriate metallic colors, such as very pale blues for silver and light yellows, and browns for gold, like the color I used for the embossed type in Figure 18.21. And remember to set the highlight or shadow colors to variations on the original color, not necessarily black or white. Try adding noise and then blurring it for a brushed metal finish. Also check out the Styles panel, which lists a great selection of prepackaged style combinations that you can apply to a layer with a single click.

After seeing the wonders of Photoshop’s filter set, it shouldn’t surprise you to learn that you can warp type into all kinds of funky shapes. The best part, however, is that it remains editable text the whole time, and you can change shapes as many times as you want. Instead of drawing your own path, the Warp Text dialog enables you to choose from 15 preset shapes. You can also modify each shape to suit your own needs. Figure 18.22 shows the presets available in the Warp Text dialog.

Figure 18.22. Multiline presets work with one, two, or more lines of type.

The Warp Text settings, shown in Figure 18.23, can be a little bit tricky at first. Start by clicking Horizontal or Vertical to set the shape’s orientation. Then use the sliders to increase or decrease the distance that the shape’s curved edges bow in or out. Moving the slider to the right bends words up; to the left (negative numbers) bends them down. Distortion makes the line of type appear to flare out on one end (Horizontal Distortion) or flare from top to bottom (Vertical Distortion).

Figure 18.23. Move the sliders left or right to change the settings.

In Figure 18.24, I’ve applied some of the warp styles to various bits of type. The best way to master the Warp Text feature is to play with it. Set a line or two of type and try the different kinds of warp on it. Choose your font carefully, though; you’ll get best results with a simpler font, and using all caps often helps to maintain the outlines of the warp shape.

Figure 18.24. Can you guess which wave forms I used on each of these words?

Traditionally, type runs in straight lines, whether it’s horizontal or vertical. But in Photoshop, you don’t have to stick to straight lines; you can put type on any path, as smooth or as ragged as you care to draw it. Of course, you need to start by drawing a path; review Hour 13, “Using Paths,” if you need a reminder of how the Path tools work. Figure 18.25 shows a path I drew.

Figure 18.25. You can tweak the curves until the path is as smooth or as wild as you want.

Then switch to the Type tool, choose an alignment setting for your type, and click at the start of the path. You’ll see a blinking insertion point oriented relative to the angle of the path at that position. As you type, the baseline of the type automatically aligns to the path, as shown in Figure 18.26.

Figure 18.26. You can still edit this type, unless you rasterize it.

After you’ve entered the type, you can switch to the Direct Selection tool to make changes. Drag the direction handles to adjust the path, or click just before the first letter and drag to move the type along the path. After you’ve set the type, you can go on and do any of the other things we’ve discussed: add shadows, put in glows, apply filters, or whatever strikes your fancy. Just one word of warning here—make sure your type is legible, even if you have to adjust kerning and tracking at specific points along the path.