Photoshop Elements 6: The Missing Manual

Warping Type

With Elements, you can warp the shape of your type in all sorts of fun ways. You can make it wave like a flag, bulge out, twist like a fish, arc up or down, and lots more. These complex effects are really easy, too, and best of all, you can still edit the type once you've applied the effects. Figure 14-6 shows just a few examples of what you can do. If you add a Layer style (explained on Adding Layer Styles), warping is even more effective.

Figure 14-6. Elements gives you oodles of ways to warp your type. Here are just a few of the basic warps, applied using their standard settings. Clockwise from the upper left: Inflate, Fish, Rise, and Flag. You can tweak these effects endlessly using the sliders in the Warp dialog box. (These examples also have Layer styles applied to them.)

WORKAROUND WORKSHOP: Using Asian Text Options to Control Text Spacing

Getting letters spaced correctly when using the Vertical Type tool can be tough. Elements lets you set the leading, but with vertical type, your leading setting affects the spacing between columns of letters, not the spacing of the letters within a column.

Also, sometimes you may want to adjust the spacing between letters written in horizontal text. Elements lets you make either of these fixes, but you need to use the Asian Text Options, even if you're writing in English.

To get started, go to Edit → Preferences → Type and turn on ...