> PHOTOSHOP USER>^ AUGUST 2019[ 90 ]
› › COLUMNSTEP THREE: CREATE A REFERENCE LIBRARY
Here’s the final part of the prep work: choosing your fonts.
Choose a handful of starting fonts that have different
weights and kerning. I chose a few sans serif fonts, including
a couple of families with dramatic weight variations. After
testing a few out, create a separate visual reference docu-
ment of the winners.This document will be used to create a library for our
project. Creative Cloud libraries are really easy to create, so
it’s painless to use them for small projects, then delete them.
In this case, the library also helps reduce the choices we need
to make during the project, just like the list of words with
which we started. To keep things consistent, set the font size
to 60 points and leave it there—when we create the library,
the point size is preserved in the preset and gives us a stable
starting point for each new word.
Within the document, ensure only the fonts, sizes, and
colors you want are represented—delete any layers with
fonts you don’t want to use.
Open the Libraries panel (Window>Libraries), c lick the
flyout menu in the upper right, and choose Create New
Library from Document. Choose Character Styles and Col-
ors if they aren’t already
selected (there shouldn’t
be anything else in your
reference document), and
click Create New Library.
Choose Rename from the
flyout menu, name your
library after your project,
click the Rename button,
and you’re good to go.
Over in the project docu-
ment, you can choose
your new library from the
Libraries panel’s drop-
down menu, if it’s not
still selected.STEP FOUR: CUSTOMIZE
SHORTCUTS AND WORKSPACE
I modified my keyboard shortcuts (Edit>Keyboard Shortcuts)
to make the 90° rotations faster. Be warned: there is some
danger here of losing other customizations or overwriting
shortcuts that are used with other plug-ins or scripts. To
solve that problem, we’ll create a custom workspace.
Photoshop currently does not include a way to create a
new workspace first, then update it with changes; you have
to start with an existing workspace, then save any changes
you make to a new one. Open the panels you know you
want to use, especially the Libraries and Layers panels. Any
others are optional, but consider removing anything extra.
Once you have the panels positioned, it’s time to create
some shortcuts.
In the Keyboard Shortcut editor (Edit>Keyboard Short cuts),
I chose Application Menus from the Shortcuts For drop-down
menu, then in the dialog, went to Edit >Transform>Rotate
90° Clockwise and used Command-Shift-. (period; PC:
Ctrl-Shift-. ). Then I did the same thing for Rotate 90° Counter-
clockwise, but using the comma instead of the period. Click
OK to close the dialog.
Note: Once I had those shortcuts established, I took
it a step further and created a new Palette Gear profile,
assigning the new shortcuts to two buttons. Palette Gear is
a hardware control system for use with Photoshop and other
creative tools. (You can check out my review of it in the
October 2018 issue of Photoshop User by clicking here.) If
you have a Wacom tablet, however, you could easily assign
custom controls there. This saves several movements, and
after assembling a few of these walls, it really pays off. Utiliz-
ing even the keyboard shortcuts without hardware is a great
timesaver because you don’t have to first enter the Trans-
form mode simply to rotate.
Now, to make it easier to undo these changes, go to
Window>Workspace>New Workspace. In the New Work-
space dialog, give it a name, turn on the checkboxes for
anything you changed, and then click Save.STEP FIVE: BUILD THE PIECES
In the project document, get the Type tool (T) and click on
the canvas, then type or paste any word you like (I copied-
and-pasted words from my Excel spreadsheet), and press
Command-Return (PC: Ctrl-Enter) to set the text. With the
text layer still selected in the Layers panel, click one of the
font choices in your open Libraries panel. This will instantly
apply the style to your text. Press V to get the Move tool,
and drag your text to the rectangular box you made. Rotate