On Mon, 14 Sep 1998, Chris Messina wrote:

> Actually, making small type in photoshop look good is easy. Use a san-serif
> font (NOT TIMES) like Verdana, Arial, or Tahoma. Make it bold for sizes
> 8-13. Turn off anti-aliasing which will blur the type. Use high contrast,

One other thing that most people don't realize when making type in
Photoshop is that PS will alias the text to try to fit it exactly where
you clicked with the Type Tool

If you click in the "middle" of a pixel, the type tool will alias the text
so to appear to be placed offset by a half pixel or so (which usually has
disasterous consequences when trying to overlay two colors of the same
text or when dealing with small anti-aliased text)

There are two solutions to the problem:

1) Turn Grid on, and Snap to Grid (This may or may not work.. I haven't
   done enough messin round with it to determine whether this alone is
   enough)

2) Follow the above step, and then zoom into 1600%.. place the type tool
icon so that the little crosshair (The underbar crossing the I, or the
exact crosshair, depending on your pointer settings) intersects exactly
with a grid intersection.. this will place your text "square" on a pixel,
which will give you MUCH cleaner text, and will even make antialiasing
clean enough on small text (sometimes) to be feasible.

NOTE: this technique will not only clean up your tiny text, but will do
wonders on MouseOvers in larger fonts (Ever notice how the text never
quite lines up correctly, no matter how close you get it?.. thats because
you clicked in that "mid-pixel" area when placing one version of your
text, but not when placing the other.. so your text is a half pixel off)

Pat

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