Paragraph Text

The text we ususally add to an image will be of point type, that is a word or several words. Yet we have the ability to add an entire paragraph of text.

We use the type “Paragraph Text”.

To add paragraph text to your image, you first select the text tool and click and drag from top left to bottom right and make a frame in the picture.

It does not matter where this frame is, you can always adjust it by the drag handles in the corners and the edges (1).
If you want to rotate the text, or rather rotate the frame, position the cursor next to a corner handle and when it changes into a double round arrow, drag it up or down (2).

To add text to the text box you can type, or you can paste from, for example, a Word document.

When a text box is not large enough to display all text, a plus sign appears in the bottom right corner handle (3).
To solve this problem, you can adjust the text size or dimensions of the frame.
Edit text in a text frame in the same way as you edit point text.

The panels “Character” and “Paragraph”

As I told you previously, we have some additional options for formatting text in Photoshop.
We find this in the “Character” and “Paragraph” panels.
Let me first start with the panel “Character”.
At the top we find the font and font style.
Below that we have the box “Text Size” (1).
Below that we have the box “set kerning between two characters” (2). With this, we set the empty vertical space between two characters.

Among them we find the “Vertically scale” box (3). What it does seems clear to me, it scales the letters vertically.
Below that we have the “Set the baseline Shift” box (4). With a shift in the baseline, the selected characters move up or down relative to the base line of the surrounding text.
In the right column we have the top option “set the leading” (5). This determines the vertical space between lines of text.
Among them we find the option to adjust the tracking (6). With this option, we determine the space between the letters.

Below that we have the option “Horizontally Scale” (7). This option scales the letters horizontally.
Below we have a color picker. With this, we set the color of the text.
And last, we have some icons to display the type of letters.

For example. The first makes the text bold, the second makes the text italic, the third makes them all uppercase letters, and so on.

The second pane is the “Paragraph” pane.

The first three icons relate to the alignment of the text. This seems obvious to me.
The next three relate to “justifying” the text. These seem clear to me.

Below we have a number of options to define the indentation and whitespace in paragraphs. The higher the value, the greater the indentation or whitespace. You should try these.

Path type (1)

The third type of text in Photoshop is path type.
In Photoshop, we have the ability to enter text along the edge of a temporary path. This path is made with a pen or shape tool.
To make text along a path, we need some text and a path. Makes sense, right?
First we draw the path.
To draw a path, we have several possibilities, one is with the “Pen” tool (1).
So select the “Pen” tool in the tool bar and select the “Paths” (2) in the options bar.
Then I draw the path.
Do not know how to draw with the “Pen” tool?
In the Photoshop CS3 course, Lesson 62 I have written a comprehensive tutorial on this, even with video.

When the path is drawn, it appears in the “Paths” panel (3). You may not need many of these, but it’s just for your knowledge.

With the black arrow in the toolbar, you can always move the path and you can adjust the shape of the path with the underlying white arrow.

If you finished drawing the path, you must close it. A line is an example of open path and a circle is a closed path.
Just click somewhere in the picture, holding the Ctrl key on your keyboard pressed.

We continue in the next lesson.

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