Photoshop CS4: The Missing Manual

Chapter 14. Creating Artistic Text

Text has the power to make or break your design and Photoshop has a veritable smorgasbord of text creation and formatting options. But just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. The act of creating text is something of an art form (called typography), though it’s all too easy to get carried away with decorating rather than creating legible prose.

Keep in mind that Photoshop isn’t always the right place to be wordsmithing in the first place. The box on The Face of Type gives you some pointers to help decide whether to hunt and peck in another program altogether. Nevertheless, Photoshop has plenty of tools that, when used tastefully, can help create beautiful type. Some of these tools are easy to find, while others are hidden so deep in the program that you’d need a treasure map to find ‘em. This chapter will guide you in the right direction, but more importantly, you’ll learn when and how to use each tool. You’ll also pick up quite a lot about the art of type in the process.

Typography 101

People have been creating and arranging symbols for thousands of years. In the early days of print, text and symbol wrangling was handled by exacting craftsmen called typesetters, who lovingly hammered letterforms into metal plates that were then physically set onto printing presses (hence the phrase, setting type). With the advent of desktop publishing, however, everyone and their Cocker Spaniel started creating text. This has been both good and ...