Experimenting With Photoshop Tools - Text

The Type Tool

Whenever we want to add any sort of text to a document, we use Photoshop’s Type Tool which is found in the Tools panel along the left side of the screen. It’s the icon that looks like a capital letter T. You can also select the Type Tool by pressing the letter T on your keyboard:

 

 

 With the Type Tool selected, your mouse cursor will change into what’s commonly referred to as an "I-beam". I’ve enlarged it a bit here to make it easier to see:

Choosing A Font

As soon as we select the Type Tool, the Options Bar along the top of the screen updates to show us options related to the Type Tool, including options for choosing a font, a font style and the font size:

 

 

To view the complete list of fonts that are available to you, click on the small down-pointing triangle to the right of the font selection box:

 

Choosing The Text Color

The Options Bar is also where we choose a color for our text. A color swatch appears near the far right of the options. By default, the color is set to black. To change the color, click on the swatch:

 

Photoshop will pop open the Color Picker where we can choose a different color for the text. For now, I’m going to leave mine set to black so I’ll simply click the Cancel button to cancel out of the Color Picker. If you do select a new text color, click OK when you’re done to close out of the Color Picker:

Use the Color Picker to choose a new color for the text.