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madcapper's avatar

Font Pixelation in Photoshop?

Asked by madcapper (3105points) December 10th, 2008

I am doing up a newsletter for my Mom in photoshop and for some reason the font is way pixelated. I have used photoshop a lot, for the past 9 years, and don’t think I have ever run into this problem. My image ppi or dpi is at 200 so I feel like something weird here. Any ideas?

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19 Answers

PupnTaco's avatar

You need 300 dpi minimum for print. Set the image size actual size in inches (probably 8.5 X 11).

Photoshop is a poor tool for page layout – try InDesign or Illustrator instead.

cookieman's avatar

Exactly what PupnTaco said.

Photoshop is best for image creation and editing. The only time I ever use the type tool in Photoshop is if the document is destined solely for the screen (web, projection).

Multi page newsletter should be done in InDesign or Quark.

madcapper's avatar

I know but the format was already .psd ( which on second thought I could probably bring into illustrator?) so I just went with it…

It’s only a basic single page holiday newsletter that I stated doing for my mom a long time ago when I was still in High School haha so I am not trying to make it super professional or anything…

PupnTaco's avatar

Copy & paste the text into illustrator and rebuild it. From there you can save it as a PDF for emailing.

AlfredaPrufrock's avatar

Is there a vector setting in illustrator? could it be done in layers?

PupnTaco's avatar

Illustrator is a vector app. And yes, it does layers.

cookieman's avatar

Well, as my dad would say: Either do it right or don’t do it at all.

Not making it “super professional” is why your text is pixelated.

Again, go with what PupnTaco said. Rebuild it in Illustrator ( or InDesign)

AlfredaPrufrock's avatar

No, I know that. Most of our work is done in InDesign, and images are manipulated in illustrator, and dropped into the InDesign template. Is there a setting in Illustrator that would convert the pixels into line art? Academic question here, since I’m up to my fanny in databases and content management systems these days.

PupnTaco's avatar

Oh like the old Adobe Streamline app? There is an autotrace tool, but there won’t be enough detail to convert the pixels to a legible vector type.

And even if it could, the letters would not be editable as text.

AlfredaPrufrock's avatar

Isn’t there some sort of rasterization setting that can screw up a font? Digging back into the cerebral archives…

windex's avatar

Corrupted Fonts!?

Also check the “Anti-Aliasing” method, might be set to “None”

You’ll find it next to the “Font size” on the options bar (on top), when you double click the text layer.

artificialard's avatar

Adobe Illustrator CS2 and newer has a great feature called Live Trace that will ‘trace’ raster art and turn it into vector art. It’s highly customisable and yields surprisingly good results. A large, detailed PDF 1.72MB is available from Adobe.

But if you can just copy the text in Photoshop and set the type in InDesign or Illustrator you’d get far, far better results.

madcapper's avatar

No worries I just decided to do it in Illustrator which I don’t know too much about but is surprisingly simple to use. Thanks everyone!

PupnTaco's avatar

Good job. The Adobe suite of apps are all similar in their UI – if you know one, you can fumble your way around the other pretty well.

madcapper's avatar

@ dave yeah they basically have the same abilities but they are just set up differently and work a little differently so it becomes simple once you realize this… there are some things in illustrator I don’t know about at all but I don’t believe I will need any of them for a pretty simple newsletter…

dorn's avatar

To get to the actual answer I feel that there are a few things that need to be determined.
What version of Photpshop are you using?
What fonts are you using?
Are the fonts showing up on the screen (in Photoshop) or when you print?
What printer will you be printing to?

All of these things are potential factors. Though what Dave says above is a good rule of thumb it is not a hard fast rule when working in Photoshop. Often it all depends…

(@AlfredaPrufrock) If it is an older version of PS I recall there being a “font smoothing” display setting when you were setting type. This did not so much effect the actual print as it just made the text on the screen look funny.

Any details would help to narrow the problem down.

madcapper's avatar

it’s all good the problem is solved actually I simply bumped my dpi to 300, exported it to illustrator and then saved it as a PDF. Now it looks just fine!

wenn's avatar

remember you can select anti-aliasing too (smooth, sharp, crisp) which will smooth out the font.

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