USING THE TYPE TOOL

Because of some new and improved features, the Type tool in Photoshop 5 works a bit differently than it did in Photoshop 4. Along with specifying a font face, font size, leading and alignment, you can now set a baseline shift, apply color, set kerning and tracking, and have multiple text attributes within the same text block.

The Type tool is located on the toolbox. You can access it by clicking once on the Type tool icon on the toolbox or by hitting the T key.

The Type tool is actually made up of four tools: the Type tool, Type Mask tool, Vertical Type tool, and Vertical Type Mask tool. These other Type tools are accessible by clicking and holding on the Type tool icon in the toolbox:

You create type in Photoshop by clicking on the Type tool in toolbox to select it (or just hit the T key). Then, click in your image window to create an insertion point for the text. The Type Tool dialog box will automatically appear. This is where you create and format text:

When the Preview button is checked, whatever you type in the Type Tool dialog box will also appear in your image window. In addition, you can move the text around in the image window at any point while the Type Tool dialog box is still open and active.

Once you type some text into the Type Tool dialog box, you must select it in order to change any of the text's format attributes (font face, size, etc.), just as you would in a desktop publishing or word processing application. However, unlike in Photoshop 4, you can now create text blocks with different format attributes all at once — instead of having to create several different text layers to accommodate font size changes, styles, etc. — by selecting different portions of the text in the Type Tool dialog box and applying the font face, size, color, etc. of your choosing:

Once you have created the text you want in the Type Tool dialog box, click OK. You can now move the text around the image window by selecting the Move tool in the toolbox (or just click on the V key). Click and hold on the text in the image window, and drag the text wherever you want.

Once you click OK in the Type Tool dialog box, you create a new Layer that appears in the Layers palette. If you want to edit the text, just double-click on the text layer name (the name, NOT the thumbnail) in the Layers palette:

The Type Tool dialog box will reappear. Select the text you want to alter and apply your changes.

To convert the editable type layer to a regular type layer (no longer editable, but still a layer — the same kind of type layer that was created in Photoshop 4), go to the Layer menu and under the drop down menu next to Type, Select Render Layer. You must Render Layer in order to apply any of the effects under the Filter menu.

In order to Save a file with text in any graphic file format (such as TIF, GIF, JPEG, etc.) other than the Photoshop format, you must first flatten the image. Note that once you do this, you can no longer edit your text or have a separate text layer to work with.

To flatten, go to the Layer menu and select Flatten Image.