Adobe Photoshop Text Tutorial: The Character Palette

In this Photoshop text tutorial, we'll look at Photoshop's Character palette, one of two text-related palettes where we can find additional font and text options beyond what's offered to us in the Options Bar when we have the Type Tool selected. We'll look at the second palette, the Paragraph palette, in the next section.

The Character Palette

The easiest way to access Photoshop's Character palette is from the Options Bar when the Type Tool is selected. As we saw in our look at the text options in the Options Bar, you can simply click on the Character and Paragraph palette "toggle switch", as I call it, which is located directly to the right of the Text Warp icon (the icon which looks like a letter T with a curved line beneath it).

Clicking on the icon brings up the Character palette, with the Paragraph palette docked along with it and waiting in the background.

If you've already read through our section on the font and text options in the Options Bar, you'll notice that a lot of those same options are found in the Character palette.

The Font Family Selection Box

In the top left of the Character palette, we have the Font Family selection box, exactly how it is in the Options Bar. The name of the currently selected font family appears in the selection box, and by clicking on the down-pointing arrow to the right of the selection box, we can bring up a scrollable list of all the available fonts on our system. If you're using Photoshop CS2, you'll see a visual preview to the right of each font family name showing you what the font looks like, a very handy feature for those of us who don't have the look of every font on our system memorized.

Choosing A Font Style

Directly to the right of the Font Family selection box in the Character palette is the Font Style selection box, another option which is also found in the Options Bar.

The Font Style selection box allows us to choose from the available styles for the currently selected font, and the currently selected font style is displayed in the selection box. Most fonts give us the general options of Regular, Italic, and Bold, but some fonts, like Helvetica Neue, give us many more choices. You can access the list of available styles for the font by clicking on the down-pointing arrow to the right of the selection box, and click on the name of the style you want to use.

Setting The Font Size

Another option found in both the Options Bar and the Character palette is the Font Size selection box. The current size for the currently selected font is displayed in the selection box, and we can change the value using the same methods as we can in the Options Bar. We can either click directly inside the selection box and type a new value for the font size, or we can click on the down-pointing arrow to the right of the selection box and choose from a list of preset font sizes.

As of Photoshop CS, we can also use the "scrubby slider" to change the font size. If you're using Photoshop CS or CS2, you can move your mouse over top of the Font Size icon directly to the left of the selection box, and your mouse cursor will change to the scrubby slider icon. Click your mouse down on the icon and drag your mouse left and right to "scrub" the font size value. Dragging to the left will decrease the font size, and dragging to the right will increase it. Release your mouse when you have the desired size value.

Text Anti-Aliasing

I'm going to skip ahead for a moment in our look at the Character palette because there's another option here that's also available in the Options Bar with the Type Tool selected, and is located directly to the right of the Font Size selection box in the Options Bar, and that's the Anti-Aliasing option. In the Character palette, the Anti-Aliasing option is located in the bottom right corner.

Anyone who's been playing computer games for a while is most likely familiar with the term "anti-aliasing". Basically, it's a way of smoothing out blocky, jagged lines, often referred to as "jaggies" in the gaming community. "Aliasing" is the term used for those "jaggies", and "anti-aliasing" is how we get rid of them.

Photoshop comes with several different anti-aliasing methods for text, including "Sharp", "Crisp", "Smooth", and "Strong", as well as "None" which effectively disables anti-aliasing.

To view the list of available anti-aliasing methods, simply click on the down-pointing arrow to the right of the anti-aliasing selection box and then click on the name of the method you want to try. You can freely switch between them to view the effect they have on your text until you're satisfied with the result.

Leading, Kerning And Tracking

Now we come to the options in the Character palette which are not found in the Options Bar. The first ones we'll look at are grouped together in the Character palette with the Font Size selection box, and they are the "Leading", "Kerning" and "Tracking" options.

Leading
The Leading selection box is located directly to the right of the Font Size selection in the Character palette, and directly below Font Style.

The term "Leading" refers to the amount of space between two lines of text and is more commonly known as "line spacing". The Leading selection box displays the leading value currently selected, and by default, it's set to Auto, which means that Photoshop will handle the spacing for you.

If you want to control the amount of leading yourself, and often times you will, you can change the leading value in exactly the same ways as changing the Font Size value. You can either click directly inside the selection box and type in a new value, or you can click on the down-pointing arrow to the right of the selection box, which brings up a list of preset leading values to choose from.

If you're using Photoshop CS or Photoshop CS2, you can also use the "scrubby slider" method mentioned in the Font Size description by moving your mouse over the Leading icon to the left of the selection box, which will turn your mouse cursor into the scrubby slider icon, and then clicking and dragging left or right with your mouse to increase or decrease the leading value. You'll see the value in the selection box changing as you drag your mouse.

The exact amount of leading (line spacing) you need depends on a number of factors, including your chosen font family, font style and font size, and there's really no "right or wrong" amount to use. The general rule is simply to choose a value that makes your text look natural and easily readable. If there seems to be too little space or too much space between lines of text, adjust the leading value accordingly.

Kerning
Directly below the Font Size selection box is the next option we'll look at, the Kerning selection box.

The term "Kerning" refers to the amount of space between two letters or characters, not to be confused with the next option we'll look at, "Tracking", which is the amount of space between multiple letters or characters. Kerning deals strictly with two letters or characters at a time.

Kerning is one of those things that most people never even notice, but once you do notice it, you'll notice it every time you look at text for the rest of your life, and it will drive you crazy every time you spot letters that are too close together or too far apart. Which is good, because that means your text will never suffer from poor kerning again.

As you can see in the screenshot above, one of the ways to change the kerning value is to click on the down-pointing arrow to the right of the Kerning selection box and choose from a list of preset kerning values. Two values that may not be familiar to you are "Metrics" and "Optical".

"Metrics" kerning uses kerning information that comes with most fonts. In other words, it uses the font's "built-in" kerning values, assuming the font comes with that information, which most do. "Optical" kerning, on the other hand, adjusts the spacing between two letters based on the shapes of those letters. Some fonts come with very specific kerning information that works very well, while others come with only minimal kerning information, or none at all, and in those cases, choosing Optical over Metrics would be the better choice. The best way to decide which one works best is to try them both and judge the results. Or, you can simply select from one of the preset values in the list.

As with Font Size and Leading, you can also type a value directly into the Kerning selection box, or you can click and drag your mouse on the Kerning icon to the left of the selection box to use the "scrubby slider" method (for Photoshop CS and CS2 users).

Tracking
To the right of the Kerning selection box, and directly below Leading, is the Tracking selection box.

Similar to Kerning, "Tracking" refers to the amount of space between letters or characters, with the difference being that Tracking deals with multiple letters or characters at a time, while Kerning deals strictly with the space between two characters.

To highlight the difference between Kerning and Tracking, Photoshop will always have either Kerning or Tracking grayed out in the Character palette depending on what you have selected with the Type Tool. When you first click inside your document to begin adding text, the Kerning option is available but the Tracking option is grayed out. Also, if you click your mouse between two letters in your text, the Kerning option will be available while Tracking will still be grayed out. It's only when you select two or more letters or characters at once with the Type Tool that the Tracking option becomes available, at which time the Kerning option is grayed out.

Changing the Tracking value is done in exactly the same way as changing the Kerning value. Photoshop CS and CS2 users can use the "scrubby slider" option on the Tracking icon to the left of the selection box, or if you're not using CS or CS2, or simply prefer not to use the scrubby slider for some reason, you can either click directly inside the Tracking selection box and type a new value, or you can click on the down-pointing arrow to the right of the selection box and select a preset value for Tracking from the list that appears.

Vertical and Horizontal Scale

The next two options we'll look at in the Character palette are located directly below the options for Kerning and Tracking, and they are the Vertical Scale and Horizontal Scale options. These two options are found only in the Character palette, not the Options Bar.

As you can see in the screenshot above, the Vertical Scale option is on the left, and the Horizontal Scale option is on the right. As their names imply, these options will scale the text either vertically or horizontally, in much the same way that using the Free Transform option would, except that with these two options, you can highlight individual letters or characters with your Type Tool and scale them independently of the other letters if you choose, something you can't do with Free Transform.

You can scale your text vertically or horizontally up to 1000% of their normal size, or down to 0% if you choose, which will effectively turn your text into vertical or horizontal lines.

The "scrubby slider" options are available for changing both the Vertical Scale and Horizontal Scale options for users of Photoshop CS or CS2, or you can also click directly inside the boxes and enter a scale percentage.

Baseline Shift

Directly below the Vertical Scale option in the Character palette is the Baseline Shift option, which allows us to move our text above or below the baseline.

As with the Vertical and Horizontal Scale options, you can move either entire blocks of text at a time or select individual letters or characters with your Type Tool and move them independently of the rest of the text.

To change the value in the Baseline Shift option, click directly in the box and type in a new value. A positive value will move the text above the baseline, and a negative value will move it below the baseline. Photoshop CS and CS2 users can also use the "scrubby slider" control on the Baseline Shift icon itself.

Changing The Text Color

Another option found in both the Character palette and the Options Bar is the option for changing the color of our text. In the Character palette, this option is located directly to the right of the Baseline Shift option, and below the Horizontal Scale option. It's the solid-colored rectangle with "Color:" written to the left of it.

The Text Color selector shows the currently selected color for the text. To change the text color, simply click inside the solid-colored rectangle and Photoshop's Color Picker will appear, allowing you to choose a new color. Click OK in the Color Picker when you're done, and the new color will appear inside the rectangle.

Additional Text Options

Near the bottom of Photoshop's Character palette is a row of icons representing various additional options for our text.

There's eight icons in total, and clicking on any of them will select their respective option for our text.

Starting from the left and moving to the right, we have options for "Faux Bold" and "Faux Italic", which give us "fake" bold and italic font styles which we can use if the font we currently have selected doesn't come with those styles. Next, we have the "All Caps" option, which will convert our text into all capital letters, followed by the "Small Caps" option which will also convert our type into capital letters but will give us smaller versions of the letters.

To the right of the "Small Caps" option, we have our standard text options for "Superscript", "Subscript", "Underline", and "Strike through", respectively.

Language Selection

The final option Photoshop gives us in the Character palette, located at the very bottom to the right of the Anti-Aliasing option, is the Language selection box.

To view a list of available languages to choose from, simply click on the down-pointing arrow to the right of the selection box.

The Language selection box is not a language translator, and selecting a different language will not magically translate your English text into German or Japanese. It's for making sure you're using the correct spelling and hyphenation for whichever language you're targeting with your Photoshop document. Normally you can leave this option set to its default value, but if you do need to create your work in a different language, this is where you would make that change.