Adobe Photoshop CS6 Top 100 Simplified Tips and Tricks by Lynette Kent

Chapter
8
Chapter
Design with Text Effects
Although Photoshop is not a page-layout
application, the new character styles and
paragraph styles panels in CS6 add more page
design and text options than previous versions.
You can add text to photographs for impact or
to create an original design. You can also
create special text effects to give personality to
the words or even use the words alone to
create the design. And you can save styles you
set up so you can reapply them quickly.
With Photoshop, you can add effects to text in
more creative ways and more quickly than is
possible using traditional tools. Not only can
you see the end result instantly, but you also
have complete creative freedom to make
changes without wasting any paper or ink. By
combining layer styles, patterns, colors, and
fonts, you can create type with just the right
look for your project. You can use text on
images and make the words appear as part of
the photograph and, conversely, make the
photo appear as part of the text.
When you type in Photoshop, the text is placed
on a type layer as vectors, or mathematically
defined shapes that describe the letters,
numbers, and symbols of a typeface. You can
warp, scale, or resize the words, edit the text,
and apply many layer effects to the text while
preserving the crisp edges. Some commands,
such as the filter effects, painting tools, and the
perspective and distort commands and tools,
however, require the type to be rasterized, or
converted to a normal layer filled with pixels.
Be sure to edit the text before rasterizing
because, once the type layer has been
converted, the letters are essentially pixels on
a layer and are no longer editable as text.