From the course: Photoshop 2024 Essential Training

Working with paragraph (area) type - Photoshop Tutorial

From the course: Photoshop 2024 Essential Training

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Working with paragraph (area) type

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- [Instructor] In addition to being able to create point type or headline type, Photoshop can also create area type. So that we don't have to spend a lot of time typing in paragraphs of text, I've created a note and saved it with this document. So in the toolbar I'll select the eyedropper and then choose the Note tool. And using the Options Bar, I can click in order to show the Notes panel. Then I just need to click on this note in order to show the contents of the note in the Note panel. I'll click in the note and Photoshop will automatically select all of the text. I can then use cmd + C on Mac, CTRL + C on Windows, in order to select the text. Then we can collapse that panel. And on the Layers panel I'm going to make the rectangle layer visible as well as target that layer. I'll also zoom in, but if I were to use the text tool now and try to drag out my area text, as soon as I click with a type tool, Photoshop is going to convert the rectangle to the area text, and I don't want that. I want the rectangle to stay as is. So in the Layers panel I'm going to click on the lock icon. Now with the type tool selected, I can click and drag out the area that I want the text to be in. Then I'll use cmd + V in order to paste in my text. Now it pasted in very large, so I'm going to commit to the type by clicking outside of it. And with the text layer still targeted, if I make any changes, it will change all of the text. So in the Properties panel, I'm going to change the text size down to 10pt. Then I'm going to change the leading to 13, and then the paragraph area, I'm going to set the justification to left justified. There are additional options that you may not see unless you click on the More icon. Here we can add indents or first line indents as well as space between or after paragraphs. So I'm going to type in 7pts here. That's just going to give me a little bit more space between these three paragraphs. Now there is an option to hyphenate in the Properties panel, but I'm going to have more control if I show the Paragraph panel. So from the Window menu, I'll choose Paragraph, and let's just expand these. And while I have the option to enable hyphenate here, I can also use the flyout menu and choose Hyphenation. I'll go ahead and enable it and then we can customize all of these different options. All right, there's also an option for Roman hanging punctuation, and when I enable this, some of the characters will be able to expand slightly outside of that bounding box. And visually, it's just going to make them look a little bit more balanced. I can also customize the justification options. So say I wanted to reduce the minimum amount of glyph scaling, but increase the maximum amount, again in order to help with the balance of the paragraphs. And because I'm working with multiple paragraphs, I'll select the menu again and choose the Every-line Composer instead of the Single-line Composer. This can help make the body of the text look more solid and it can help avoid what are known as rivers that go through blocks of text, which would be big spaces, as well as avoid awkward breaks of text that would result in either widows or orphans, where there's very little text in the last line of a paragraph. Now if you did have a word that was breaking because of hyphenation in an awkward way, or maybe it was a proper name, you could always select that word, and then from the Character panel you can use the flyout menu and choose No Break and it will force Photoshop not to hyphenate that word. All right, I can see that there is additional text in this paragraph because there's a plus in the lower right hand corner of the bounding box. So I'm going to go ahead and resize this until I no longer see that plus. Then I can click anywhere outside of the area text, tap the V key to select the Move tool, and then I can select both the Type tool as well as the Rectangle tool. I'll want to make sure that I unlock the rectangle and then we can center these horizontally and vertically. So there you have it, a quick introduction to paragraph, or area type in Photoshop.

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