Adobe Photoshop Text Tutorial: Text Warp

In this Photoshop text tutorial, we'll look at Photoshop's built-in Text Warp options and how they allow us to create simple effects by warping our text into different shapes, all while keeping our type completely editable.

Photoshop's Text Warp options have been around for a while now, since version 6, and they haven't changed much in all that time, yet they're still fun to play with and a very easy way to add some visual interest to your text. The great thing about the Text Warp options is that no matter how crazy you get with them, you can always go back and edit your type, which is not true with most of the more advanced text effects you can create in Photoshop, which usually require you to either rasterize your text (which means converting it into pixels) or converting it to a vector shape. In either case, you lose the ability to edit your text, and that's why Photoshop's Text Warp feature is still a great option to have around, even after all these years.

Where To Find The 'Text Warp' Options

As the name implies, the Text Warp options are only for use with text, and because of that, you can't access them unless you have Photoshop's Type Tool selected from the Tools palette (press the letter "T" on the keyboard for a quick shortcut).

With the Type Tool selected, if you look up in the options bar, you'll see an icon made up of a capital letter "T" and a curved line beneath it. This is the Text Warp icon, or the "Create warped text" icon as Photoshop calls it.

If you don't yet have any text added to your document, or the layer you currently have selected in the Layers palette is not a type layer, the Text Warp icon will be grayed out and unavailable. You'll need to either add your text to the document first, or click on a type layer in the Layers palette to select it if you already have text added to your document. Once you've done that, the Text Warp icon will become available, and clicking on it will bring up the Text Warp control panel.

The Text Warp "Styles"

There's 15 different built-in shapes (referred to as "styles" in the Text Warp control panel) which you can warp your text into, but when the Text Warp control panel first appears, the style is set to "None", and the three controls below it, "Bend", "Horizontal Distortion" and "Vertical Distortion", are grayed out.

To access the styles (shapes) that you can choose from, click on the down-pointing arrow to the right of the Styles selection box (which currently says "None" inside of it), and a list of the style choices will appear.

To select any of the styles, simply click on the style's name in the list.

As soon as you select a style, the text you currently have selected in your document will automatically warp into that shape.

Some of the style choices in the Text Warp control panel are legitimately useful, while others are downright goofy. You can decide for yourself which ones are which.

Here's a preview of what the various Text Warp style effects will give you. I've gone ahead and typed the word "PHOTOSHOP" into my document, using all caps and the Impact font. Here's what my text looks like before adding any styles:

And here's what my text looks like with each of the Text Warp styles applied to it, starting from the top of the list:

Arc:

Arc Lower:

Arc Upper:

Arch:

Bulge:

Shell Lower:

Shell Upper:

Flag:

Wave:

Fish:

Rise:

Fisheye:

Inflate:

Squeeze:

Twist:

As you can see from the previews above, some of the Text Warp styles, like the "Arc" styles, could be quite useful, while others, like "Inflate" and "Twist", well, maybe not so much.

Once you've applied a style to your type, if you look in your Layers palette, you'll notice that the thumbnail preview of your type layer has changed to the Text Warp icon, to indicate that you've applied a Text Warp style to the type on that layer.

Feel free to try each style in the list, since there's no limit to how many times you can switch between the styles, just as long as you don't convert your type to pixels (rasterize it) or covert it to a shape. As soon as you convert your type to something other than type, you not only lose the ability to edit your text, you also lose the ability to change the Text Warp style.

The Type Remains Editable

I mentioned at the beginning of this tutorial that the great thing about the Text Warp options is that no matter how wild and crazy you get with them, you can always go back and edit your type, and to show you what I mean, I'm going to set my Text Warp style back to the first one in the list, "Arc".

Next, I'm going to double-click directly on the thumbnail preview of my type layer in the Layers palette to quickly select the entire word, and I'm going to type "ADOBE PHOTOSHOP" instead. Here's the results:

I can do the same thing again. I'll double-click on the thumbnail preview on my type layer in the Layers palette to quickly select both words, and I'll type "WARPED TEXT". And here's the result:

Changing The Look Of The Text Warp Styles

Whenever you select one of the Text Warp styles from the list, Photoshop automatically goes ahead and warps your type into the default look for that particular style. The previews above of all the various styles all use the default look for each style. You can accept the default look, or you can make changes to it.

Every style in the list comes with the exact same options for changing the default appearance of the style. You can adjust the "Bend" amount, as well as the amount of "Horizontal Distortion" and "Vertical Distortion".

You can change the percentage values of all three options either by clicking directly inside the percentage value box for the specific option and typing in a new value, or by dragging the slider below each option left and right.

The "Bend" option also includes to additional options above it, "Horizontal" and "Vertical". These determine whether the type will bend horizontally or vertically. To switch between them, simply click inside the round circle to the left of each word.

One important thing to note is that when you make a change to the Bend, Horizontal Distortion or Vertical Distortion for any of the styles, you're making the change for all of the styles. If you make changes to these options and then select a new style from the list, those changes will remain with the new style as well.

If you've messed things up with the look of your styles and want to quickly reset them back to the default appearance, hold down the "Alt" key (Win) or the "Option" key (Mac). You'll see the "Cancel" button in the upper right corner of the Text Warp control panel change to "Reset". Simply click the Reset button, and your style options will return to their normal values.

And that's our look at Photoshop's Text Warp options.