Lesson 9 Bitmap Typography Raster Type Tools Photoshop's Horizontal Type Tool lives towards the bottom of the Tool Palette. Almost every paint program living and breathing ones and zeroes today has some form of type tool. Type tools allow you to create text within your paint program, of course, and other standard bitmapping features allow you to modify what you type with various degrees of control.

In Photoshop, the Type Tool is accessed by clicking on the "T" icon, or by pressing the T key After you select the Type tool in the Tool Panel, your Options bar across the top of the screen (under the menu bar) becomes active with your Type Tool options. Here you can choose a Font, Style and Size, along with other attributes, before you begin.

To select the type face, first choose a font from the Font pop-up window in the Options bar. Here, all of the fonts installed on your computer will be available to the program, and a sample of what the type looks like is available for your convenience.

Helvetica is a sans serif font that has been a favorite of the industry since the mid-1950s, and there are many variations on the Helvetica theme, including versions that are compressed, condensed, expanded or stylized. And I can further Transform the word objects in Photoshop in the Character panel, or by using Edit>Transform. Next to the Font pop-up is the Typestyle choose from. But remember, fonts are pop-up. If your font has options, like software, and as such, you must purchase italic or bold faces, it will appear there. them to use them legally. Often some Depending on the fonts and varieties you come installed with your computer, and have installed in your computer, you can Adobe gives you some when you buy choose from a wide variety of styles. I Photoshop, Illustrator and other have lots of variations of Helvetica to products. Next choose your Type Size. I have Left Align button. This means that entered a size of 72 points, which, as you wherever I click on the canvas initially recall from last time, is the size of the with the Type tool, that will become the entire range of the font, from the tallest left end of my line (or lines) of type. The ascender to the lowest descender. In the black color swatch indicates that the text Alignment section I have selected the I type will be in the default color of black. After you have selected your Type you type. Once you have finished typing, attributes, move the Type cursor “I-beam” you will need to exit the Type tool by onto the canvas and click. That places clicking on another tool. I usually choose your anchor point. Now just begin typing. the Move tool so I can reposition the type Your text appears in the current (or if necessary, but any other tool will get default) Font/Style/Size/Alignment as you out of the Type tool environment. The Type Tool dialog gives you the option of creating 5 levels of Anti-Aliased Type. I recommend Sharp or Crisp anti- aliased type for most usages. But sometimes you want an exaggerated computer-pixel look, and for that you’d choose “None.”

Anti-aliasing makes the type look more natural on the canvas by filling in the "jaggies" with gradually lighter colored squares which are usually only visible at greater magnification. You can also align your type vertically. Choose the Vertical Type Tool, nested with the other Type Tools in the Tool palette. Use this tool to stack letters vertically.

A word of caution, though: vertical alignment of type is rarely a good design choice. So far we have looked at black type. But square in the Toolbar, and the Type tool certainly, you can have type of any color will use that for your color. Or, with the your want. In Photoshop, select the Type tool selected, you can click on the foreground color before you begin, by Type Color swatch in the Options bar clicking on the Set foreground color and launch the Color Picker that way. You can also select a color using the Color or Swatches panels. Here I have chosen basic red and then used the Type Tool to type, and the word appears on the canvas in the chosen color. You can re- color existing type, too. Simply select type you have already created using the Type tool, and then use one of the methods we reviewed to change the type color. The Character panel is where you can access Leading, Kearning, Tracking and other attributes, like faux styles and anti-aliasing.

The Paragraph panel gives you alignment options for multiple lines of type, as well as useful indentation and hyphenation controls.

To get more control over your type, you can use the Character and Paragraph panels. If they are not nested with your other Panels, choose them from the Window menu. This will provide you with lots of options not directly available in the Type Tool options palette. When you press the return key while type size so that descenders don't touch using the Type Tool you will of course ascenders on the next line below. But you create another line of type. Leading is the can change the leading manually for space a line of type uses, as measured in special effects, like I have done here. For points from baseline to baseline. Leaving example, I have entered a value of 24 for the Leading entry blank will provide an the leading, which forces the larger, 72- automatic leading of 20% more than the point type lines to overlap. Tracking, an option in the Character Kerning is also an option but is a bit panel, is the adjustment of the space different than Tracking. In Kerning you between a group of selected letters. place your cursor between to adjacent Increase the value to separate letters you letters to target them, and then use the have selected, or use a negative value to Kerning values to change the space bring them closer, or even overlapping. between just those two letters. Every time you use the Type tool in Photoshop, you place type on a new layer. Only the Photoshop File Format (PSD) fully supports Photoshop layers, and those layers can add up in a complicated design. This sample shows a file with 10 Type layers plus the white background. That makes the file bigger and takes up storage space. Try to keep your multiple layers at a reasonable number. ©2014 HARRY ST.OURS This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 U.S. License. All images and text by the author or used with permission, , or under the Fair Use for Educators clause of the DMCA 2000. Brand names mentioned and logos displayed are the properties of their respective companies. All other rights reserved.