Quick Tip Tuesday – Scooch Over, Will Ya?

The spacing between letters in a font is very important.  Font Designers spend a lot of time getting just the right look they want, not only in the shape of the letters, but how each letter relates to the next.

So now I’m going to show you how to screw it up!

Sometimes you may want to adjust the spacing between letters for a different look.

You may want to spread things out, like this:

or squish them together like this:

This spacing is called kerning or tracking.

In Photoshop, it’s easy, you just need the Character panel.  Go to Window> Character or click on the little panel symbol in the Options bar:

In the Character Panel, look for the AV with a sideways arrow under it.  Click on the down arrow to adjust the amount for that setting.  A negative number will put the letters closer together, a positive number makes them wider apart.  (You must have the text highlighted for it to be affected.)

In PSE, it’s a little trickier!  They’ve hidden the control for this in the oddest place!

To reveal it, go to Edit> Preferences> Type and click in the Show Asian Text Options box.

When you do that, the Asian Text Options symbol will show in the Options bar while your Type tool is selected.

Now highlight the text you wish to affect, and click on the Asian Text Options symbol.

Click on the down arrow at the bottom of the box, and you can choose a value.  The higher the number, the closer together your letters will be.

You can even do this just for one letter!  In the following PS example, I left the first letter large, and made the remaining three smaller.  Then I highlighted the first letter, and changed the tracking amount to –260.  This resulted in the last three letters scooting over to the left, but the distance between them staying the same.

I also decided I wanted them more centered, so I adjusted the baseline shift at the bottom left in the panel.  The –5 moved the L down a little bit to put the ‘ove’ closer to center of the L. (I’ve not been able to figure out how to do this in PSE, sorry!)

I hope this gives you a little idea how you can get more from your fonts!! Try it, and post in our gallery so we can see how you did!

Happy Scrapping!
Jenn

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