Text tools are not right.

[justpix]

PSPx2 Ultimate


I am sure that this is my fault but I can't put in decent text onto a picture.
After doing a tutorial my text is messed up.
I tried using Help but I am not sure what or where it is wrong.
When I try to type either it leaves big spaces between the letters or when I click enter it will put the next line over half way down the page.
If I try and adjust things like the tracking etc I can get things to type in backwards....
Maybe what I would like to know is what are the default settings so I can get things back to at least the way they were.. Then maybe not do any tutorials that change my text tools.....
Thank you

[Ron P.]

You can try using the Reset, found in File menu>Preferences>Reset Preferences.

[justpix]

Didn't help. But now I am wondering if it has something to do with the size of what I am working on.
And should I be using Pixels or Points for my font?
Thank You

[Ron P.]

I don't know, because you haven't provide enough information for me to comment on that. Most of the time you use points when dealing with fonts. Flash authoring applications make better use of the pixel measurements with fonts.

[LeviFiction]

Do you have the link to the tutorial? That may help.

One quick note Points are essentially 1/72 inches per point. So a point size of 72 is 1 inch tall. So how many pixels it uses depends on how big an inch is on your image.

Pixel text will always occupy the same amount of pixels so higher resolutions will display the text smaller. Points are usually better. Then again these are vector text and you can resize them after the fact so it's really up to you which method you'd prefer.

[justpix]

It seems like it might have to do more with the different sizes of things maybe.
The tutorial said to put kerning at 0 and I couldn't get it to do that mine would only go -15 or 10 that is as close to 0 as I could get. My stroke width wouldn't go below 0.0. After messing with trying to set those things is when I started having problems with it.
I have now gotten back so that I can type a line the right way but when I hit enter there is still a large gap between the lines so now I am putting in another layer and then typing the second line so I can move it to where I want it......kind of a pain but at least I got it done.......
Thanks.......

[LeviFiction]

Well first off. The Kerning box is a little odd as the up down arrows do tend to skip numbers. And the scrub box is not always the best but you're allowed to click inside the number box and edit the number manually. So you could have clicked in there and changed it to zero that way.

Also stroke width is how large the width of the outline/stroke is. A width of 0 is as low as you can go because you can't get smaller than no stroke.

Now the problem you mention of the lines being too far apart might be a problem with your Leading value. Try changing the leading and see if that helps your problem.

I should probably explain...don't know if you need me to or not.

Kerning - is the spacing between your characters. With Auto Kern turned on (check box next to kerning) it uses the kern value in the font file.

Leading - is the spacing between lines a larger lead is larger spacing a smaller lead is smaller spacing. Also keep in mind the settings are done in decimal values. .1 .2 .3 .4 and all variations in between are good edits of this value. Edits of 1 or more are extreme edits and you'll see that if you test it out.

So these values are the ones that would most likely effect the spacing of your text. All have arrows, scrub methods, and manual editing of the numbers if you like. I usually keep all of these at 0 to use the default values for the individual fonts.

You'll notice some fonts have bigger kerning and leading values than others do. And font size also plays a factor. Some fonts will have huge gaps, others will have small gaps. It's how the fonts are designed.

The values mentioned above give you control over that should you need it.

[justpix]

Sometimes it takes me a while I should have just asked what Kerning and tracking meant and that would have answered a lot of questions wouldn't it...Thank You for doing that without me asking.....No I don't know that much about the program. There is a lot to learn and I am getting old....lol
I can set those to 0 maybe some of it is that with the dark background I never gave it a thought.....Oh my... it is that I just don't know some of those things but some things make my look silly......OK......

I like to use a cursive font for a lot of things and it seems like they give me the most trouble.
I really want to learn how to put things together myself so they don't look like I piled things on top of each other.
It isn't that I can't use the Help in PSP but as you see sometimes if you don't know what something means it is hard to get things set....
Thank You again........
Janet

[Tim Morrison]

To reset the Text tool (or any other tool) to its default settings, click on "Presets" on the Tool Options palette and you will see four icons on the right side of the Preset drop down. Click on the second icon from the top... it looks like a curved arrow.
From the trouble that you've had setting Kerning to zero, it sounds as if you're trying to set the value by clicking the up and down arrows, but there are several other ways to set a value in one of those controls in PSP. If you click inside the box, you can type in a value. If the value is one that won't work in that place, the box will turn red, and the value won't take. As well as clicking on the large down arrow to get a slide to drag, you can drag directly on the little bar graph directly underneath the number.
As for using points or pixels, it doesn't really matter, but typically you would use points if the image is to be printed, and pixels if you're making an image to be viewed on screen. That's basically true in everything to do with a digital image... use pixels for on screen images, and use a physical measurement, like inches, points or centimetres, for images that will be printed.