Adobe Photoshop Text Tool – Paragraph Type and Point Type

Sat, Jul 26, 2008

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I’ve been bugged about how sometimes I get text boxes that are word-wrapped (i.e. I can adjust the size of the box so that the text automatically fits into the textbox area) and text boxes that are free-form, without any boundaries. The problem was, I didn’t know how to switch from one mode to the other. And finally, I found out how.

To adjust the flow of characters within a bounding box is to use the paragraph type mode, and the free-form mode is known as the point type mode. Note though, that when you convert from paragraph type to point type, a carriage return is added at the end of each line of type (with the exception of the last line). Also, all characters that overflow the bounding box are deleted. So to avoid losing text, adjust the bounding box so that all type is visible prior to conversion.

To switch between modes, follow these steps:

Select the type layer in the Layers palette.
Choose Layer > Type > Convert To Point Text, or Layer > Type > Convert To Paragraph Text.

I realised that sometimes you can simply right-click on the text layer and select the option directly from the right-click menu. I say sometimes, because I’ve encountered times where the option goes missing and is replaced by an option to “Convert To Smart Object” (Till now, I have no idea why).

This post was written by:

Alvin - Alvin is a Singaporean who's interested in marketing, techy stuff and likes to just figure out how the two can work with each other. On top of his blog, you can also follow him on Twitter.

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