The document discusses various topics related to writing text in Photoshop CS6 including: 1) The anatomy of type including x-height, ascenders, and descenders. 2) Different font types such as serif, sans serif, and monospaced fonts. 3) Font options like style, orientation, anti-aliasing, and size. 4) Techniques for masking, altering letter shapes, fine-tuning, and binding text to paths. 5) Creating and adjusting paragraph text frames.

1. Ch 6: Writing
Photoshop CS6 Essentials
By Scott Onstott

2. Ch 6: Writing
Anatomy of Type
• The height of the lowercase letter x is called x-height and refers to the height of
lower case letters in general.
• Lower case letters b, d, f, k, l, t have ascenders that are higher than the x-height.
• Lower case letters g, j, p, q, y have descenders that are lower than the baseline the
letter x rests on.
• The cap height is the x-height plus the ascender while the font height equals the
ascender plus the x-height plus the descender.

3. Ch 6: Writing
Font Types
• Serif fonts have small horizontal
lines or wedges at the end of
some letter strokes that originate
from a time when letters were
painted with a brush.
• Sans serif fonts sometimes-simpler
appearance can be preferable for
readability on the web and/or in
larger font sizes.
• A small subset of the fonts supplied
by Photoshop is monospaced
where each letter has exactly the
same width like a typewriter.

4. Ch 6: Writing
Font Options
• Some fonts have styles that are variations on a theme.
• Style examples include condensed, expanded, italic, and bold families
• You can toggle the orientation of your text from horizontal to vertical or vice
versa by clicking the Text Orientation toggle
• There are several anti-aliasing options that each produce very subtle
differences to blend the edges of the vector font into the grid of pixels
• You can type any font size into the text box rather than rely on the choices
that appear in the drop down menu

5. Ch 6: Writing
Mask Text
• The Horizontal and Vertical Mask Text tools
create selections only
• While you are in the process of typing mask
text it retains its vector editability
• After you commit any changes to the mask
text the vector representation is rasterized
and the output becomes a selection
• You can do many creative things with
selections as you will be learning in
subsequent chapters
• One such example shown in this chapter is
creating a mask for a gradient fill layer

6. Ch 6: Writing
Altering Letter Shape
• After you create a text layer you can
convert it to a shape by choosing
this option in the context menu
that appears when you right click
the layer name
• Once converted the text is no longer
text (you can’t edit which letters
appear) but has become a
vector drawing
• Use the Direct Selection tool to
tweak any of the anchor points
to create the letter shapes you
want

7. Ch 6: Writing
Fine-Tuning Text
• The Character panel has many more option
than appear on the options panel for
fine-tuning text
• Leading adjusts the spacing between lines
• Kerning adjusts the spacing between letter
pairs
• Tracking adjusts the spacing of the entire
selection
• You can also scale text vertically and/or
horizontally
• A variety of special mode button appear on
the lower portion of the Character panel

8. Ch 6: Writing
Binding Text to a Path
• Begin by drawing an open or
closed shape in Paths mode
• Select the Horizontal or Vertical
Type tool and position the
cursor directly over the work
path; when it changes to a
cursor with a curved path icon
click to bind the text to the
path
• After you type the text bound to
the path press A to select
either path selection tool
• Drag to position the text relative to
the path

9. Ch 6: Writing
Writing Paragraph Text
• You can create paragraph text in two ways.
From scratch you simply drag the
insertion point cursor and drag out a
window approximating the size of the
imaginary box you wish to fill with
paragraph text
• Right-click point text and choose Convert to
Paragraph text from the context menu
to convert existing text
• Drag the handles on the paragraph frame
and the text will flow and wrap within

10. Ch 6: Writing
Adjusting Paragraph Text
• “Lorem Ipsum” is the name of standard
filler text used for approx 500 years.
• Filler text isn’t meant to be read but
used as a placeholder for layout
• The site www.lipsum.com is a
convenient source that generates
filler text of arbitrary length
• The optimum line length is 10 words for
best reading efficiency
• Full justification is best used with
hyphenation to optimize the space
between words