[Tutorial]Character Styles

User avatar
kabuto
Site Admin
Posts: 149
Joined: Thu Mar 19, 2015 12:06 pm

[Tutorial]Character Styles

Postby kabuto » Sat Aug 11, 2018 6:38 pm

What are they?
Character styles are presets that allow you to quickly set font, size, kerning, and a few other settings. They are similar to Typesetterer's Tooler styles with the bonus of being more flexible and integrated in Photoshop.


Pros
  • Quickly select the text style you want
  • Cut out a lot of the time selecting fonts takes
  • Integrate style guides into Photoshop
  • Preset styles will lead to more stylistic consistency between chapters


Cons
  • Can't be resorted
  • Can't be grouped
  • Set per file(no global styles)
  • Requires a text layer


How to use them?
To display the Character Styles window, go to "Window>Character Styles".

After that, you can click "New Stlye"(the paper with a folded corner) in the panel to add a new character style. Then, select the style you've created, edit the font settings and hit the "Redefine"(check mark) to set those settings to the style. You can also double click the character style and set things that way, which is where you rename the style.

Congrats, you have a character style! I typically make multiple sizes of each style since I have the Character Style and Character panel tabbed next to each other, so it saves time going back and forth to change the size and leading. An easy way to do this is to select a style, click on the "Options"(three horizontal lines) in the panel and select "Duplicate Style" and change the size and leading on the new file.

Now to get the style onto different pages. You can either go to the next page, then panel options, and select "Load Character Styles...", or on the page you created the style on, go to panel options and select "Save Default Type Styles" before going to the next page and selecting "Load Default Type Styles."

When you create styles, you should note that they typically load in in the order they're created. I sometimes get them in different orders and am still not entirely sure why, but the rule generally stands. It's a good idea to knock out all sizes you believe you'll want of a new font when you make one size to keep them grouped together, though it's also advice I don't tend to take myself. <.<;

As a last note, you should always click "Revert"(round arrow) to revert any overrides when you open a page or set any settings manually on a bubble. Otherwise they'll be considered overrides, for example, if you set the font size to 20px, but the character style is 24px, then you'll be at 20px when you create a new layer with the style since you've "told" Photoshop you want the font at 20px for that file.

Return to “Tutorials”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests