Adobe Photoshop Text Tutorial: The Options Bar

In this Photoshop text tutorial, we'll look at the font and text options available to us in the Options Bar when we have Photoshop's Type Tool selected from the Tools palette.

The Type Tool's Options Bar

Photoshop gives us a few different places to access our font and text options. There's the Character and Paragraph palettes, and the one we'll look at here - the Options Bar.

In order to view the font and text options in the Options Bar, you first need to have the Type Tool selected from the Tools palette, and the quickest way to select it is by pressing the letter "T" on your keyboard.

As we saw in the section on the Type Tool, Photoshop gives us four different Type tools to choose from in the Tools palette - the Horizontal Type Tool, the Vertical Type Tool, the Horizontal Mask Type Tool, and the Vertical Mask Type Tool. Of these, the one you'll use most often, and possibly the only one you'll ever use, is the Horizontal Type Tool, which is commonly referred to simply as the Type Tool, and that's how we'll refer to it here as well.

Choosing A Font

The first text option we'll look at in the Options Bar, with our Type Tool selected, is the one that allows us to select our font family.

Any fonts you have installed on your computer, whether they came with your operating system, Photoshop, another software program, or you downloaded them from the internet, are available for use inside Photoshop and can be accessed from the Font Family selection box, as shown in the screenshot above. The font currently selected has its name appearing in the selection box, and to view the other fonts you have on your system, simply click on the down-pointing arrow to the right of the selection box, which will bring up a list of all the fonts you have to choose from on your computer.

New as of Photoshop CS2 is a handy visual preview of each font to the right of each font name in the list.

Depending on how many fonts you have installed on your computer, the Font Family list can be quite lengthy, and if that's the case, use the scroll bar on the right of the drop-down list to scroll through all your font choices.

To select a font, simply click on its name in the list.

Choosing A Font Style

To the right of the Font Family section box is the Font Style selection box, where you can select the specific style of font you want to use.

Most fonts give you the general choices of Regular, Bold, and Italic, but some fonts, like Helvetica Neue for example, give you many different style choices.

The Font Style selection box displays the name of the currently selected font style for the currently selected font. To access a list of all available styles for that font, click on the down-pointing arrow to the right of the selection box.

Choosing A Font Size

To the right of the Font Style selection box is the Font Size selection box, where you can set the size, in points (pt), of the font.

The Font Size selection box displays the current size of the currently selected font. There's a few different ways to change the font size. One is to simply click inside the Font Size selection box and type in a new value. Another is to click on the down-pointing arrow to the right of the Font Size selection box, which will bring up a list of preset font sizes to choose from. To select one of the sizes, simply click on it in the list.

The Font Size Scrubby Slider
If you're using Photoshop CS or Photoshop CS2, you can also take advantage of the "scrubby slider" controls when changing the font size. Simply click your mouse over the Font Size icon directly to the left of the font size selection box, and with your mouse button still down, drag your mouse left or right to increase or decrease the font size. You'll see your mouse icon turn into a scrubby slider icon, and you'll see the font size value in the selection box changing as you drag the mouse left and right.

Choosing An Anti-Aliasing Method For The Font

Next up as we continue moving to the right in the Options Bar is the Anti-Aliasing selection box. "Anti-aliasing" is how programs like Photoshop prevent the text from looking jagged and blocky, giving it a smooth, clean look instead. As with the selection boxes we've already looked at, the currently selected anti-aliasing method for the currently selected font is displayed here.

To choose a different anti-aliasing method, simply click the down-pointing arrow to the right of the selection box, and a list of the available anti-aliasing methods will appear. To choose one, click on it in the list.

There's no right or wrong choice for choosing an anti-aliasing method for your text, and sometimes even "None" may be the best choice depending on your choice of font, the size of the font, and the effect you're going for, although you'll usually choose one of the other options. The easiest way of selecting an anti-aliasing method is to try each one and see the effect it has on your text. You can switch freely between the anti-aliasing choices as you're deciding.

Text Alignment Options

To the right of the Anti-Aliasing options in the Options Bar is where we find our Text Alignment options.

By default, the left alignment option is selected, but choosing either right or center alignment for your text is as easy as clicking on the icon for that choice.

Choosing A Color For The Text

Moving once again to the right in the Options Bar, we come across a solid-colored rectangle. This is where we can change the color of our text. The color currently showing inside the rectangle is the currently selected color for the font.

To change the color, simply click inside the rectangle and Photoshop's Color Picker dialog box will appear, allowing you to choose a different color. Click OK in the Color Picker when you've chosen your new color, and that new color will appear inside the rectangle in the Options Bar.

Warping The Text

The next option in the Options Bar to the right of the Text Color selector is the Text Warp option.

The Text Warp options allow you to warp your text into various shapes using the Text Warp dialog box, which you can access by clicking on the Text Warp icon.

We'll cover the Text Warp options in more detail in another section.

Accessing The Character And Paragraph Palettes

The Options Bar gives us quick access to many of the standard font and text options we need when working with the Type Tool, but it doesn't give us every option. There's even more options available to us, and for those, we have to turn to Photoshop's Character and Paragraph palettes. We'll look at each of these palettes and their additional options in another section, but a quick way to access them is to simply click on the icon immediately to the right of the Text Warp icon, the Character and Paragraph palettes "toggle switch", as I like to call it, since it toggles them on and off.

Again, we'll look at these two palettes in another section, but this option in the Options Bar is a quick and easy way to access them.

Committing And Canceling Edits

The final two options we have for the Type Tool in the Options Bar are for committing or canceling our text. Neither of these two options is visible in the Options Bar until we begin typing or editing text, so if you're wondering why you're not seeing these two options to the right of the Character and Paragraph palettes toggle icon, that's why. If you want to see them, just click anywhere inside your document with the Type Tool to begin typing and they'll appear.

These two options are pretty straightforward. Clicking on first one on the left (the circle with the diagonal line through it) will cancel anything you've just typed or any edits you've just made to existing type, and clicking on the second one (the checkmark) will accept your text or the edits you've just made to existing text.

And that's our look at the font and text options available to us in the Options Bar with Photoshop's Type Tool selected.