Photoshop 7 Text Formatting, Identifying Mystery Fonts Online

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*** DesignGeek ***
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Tips and techniques for the digital designer

Tips in this issue:
- Photoshop 7 Text Formatting
- Identifying mystery fonts on-line

Issue 1, 6/23/03
Written by Anne-Marie "HerGeekness" Concepcion

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Photoshop 7 Text Formatting Trick

One thing that frustrates me about Photoshop is that unlike other programs with a Layers feature, you can't put more than one "text block" in a single layer. If you want text to appear in your image in different locations, you have to create a text layer for each instance (or drag out a bounding box for a Text Area and then get creative with your space bar — ugh).

Since most menu or palette commands only apply to the active layer, this makes it impossible to do a global formatting change to your text; such as changing the font size or color of the text throughout the image, or making them all center-aligned instead of left-aligned. You have to repeat the same formatting commands on every text layer.

Right? Wrong!

Try this:

First, link all your text layers: Select one text layer (makes no difference which), then click in the "link" box (to the right of the eyeball) in the layers palette for each of the other text layers you want to change ... you should see a chain icon appear in them.

Then select the Text tool, if you haven't already.

To make a global change to all your linked text layers, just hold down the Shift key when you choose something from the Text Options bar or the Character or Paragraph palette.

For example, to make all the type 18 point, hold down the Shift key while you choose "18" from the Type Size field in the Options bar or the Character palette. Tab out of the field to see all your text layers resize to 18 points.

Want to change the color of the type on all the text layers? Hold down Shift and click the color field in the Options bar or Character palette. When the Color Picker opens you can release the Shift key. Choose a color (the Preview will only show your targeted layer changing, but don't worry) and then click OK. All the linked text layers change to that color.

Note the Shift trick only works for elements you can choose in the Text Options bar or the Character/Paragraph palette, and not for any other palettes, the Toolbox or menu commands.

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Font Finding

Speaking of fonts, have you ever needed to match an existing font you didn't recognize? And it's no longer a "font" into which you click an insertion bar and see what the font menu says? Perhaps the type in the artwork you're given to work with has been converted to outlines or rasterized, or worse, all you've got is a printed sample.

This just happened to me a couple weeks ago. I needed to create two more navigation buttons throughout a client site for two new sections we were adding. The font for the button labels had to match the font used in the existing nav buttons, but all we had to work with were the button .gifs themselves with the text already flattened into the color background.

I tried opening one of the buttons in Photoshop and zooming in — a mistake. GIFs of 10-point type are like insects. They look harmless from a distance, but the more you zoom in the more monstrous they become.

After a half-hour of fruitless experimenting — could it be Futura? ... nope. Maybe Univers? tap tap tap tap.... nope. Univers Condensed? tap tap ... nope — I turned to the free Web service "Identifont" and had my answer in three minutes (turned out it was Frutiger Light Condensed).

http://www.identifont.com/

Identifont asks you a series of questions about the letterforms in your sample. Questions like, "Does the 'Q' tail cross the circle?" followed by three or four ways it could cross or not cross, shown as pictures and explanatory text. You choose the answer and it goes on to the next question ("Is the '4' open or closed?"). If your artwork doesn't happen to contain the character in question, you can always choose "Don't Know."

After ten or twenty questions, Identifont presents you with the name of the font that matches your answers. Sometimes it can't tell, and it gives you three or four possible matches. Most of the matches are linked to font samples on the foundry's page so you can confirm that all the characters in your sample match the ones in that typeface; and perhaps purchase the font if you don't own it already.
Identifont is the real engine behind most other question-based font identifier utlities found on the Internet, such as "Find Font by Sight" on Agfa/Monotype's fonts.com:

http://www.fonts.com/findfonts/identifontframe.asp?nCo=AFMT&FONTNAME=identifont

The Human-Computer Interface company, based in Cambridge, England, is the source of the Identifont engine:

http://www.interface.co.uk/

They've done some other interesting projects, check them out!

--AM

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DesignGeek is a free biweekly publication written by Anne-Marie "HerGeekness" Concepcion, authorized Adobe and Quark training provider and president/creative director of Seneca Design & Training, Inc. in Chicago, Illinois.

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