Photoshop_User_-_March_2017

> PHOTOSHOP USER

>^ MARCH 2017

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ANSWERS TO PHOTOSHOP AND GEAR-RELATED QUESTIONS

What is the EmojiOne font? You mentioned it in passing last month when writing about scalable vector

graphics (SVG) with the Trajan Color font. (I think it’s very cool that an individual character can contain

a gradient! I just wish more programs supported the feature.) —Raquel

EmojiOne is a font that consists of “emojis”—symbols and

characters that convey emotion, opinion, or representation

of an object, activity, place, or even national flags. Technically,

emoji is a computer language that uses a single character to

convey lots of information. Consider, if you will, the simple

“smiley face” character. What does it really express and how

many words would it take to communicate everything that

one glyph represents? “This makes me happy.” “I think this

is funny and it made me smile.” “I’m very happy right now.”

Adobe’s EmojiOne font uses SVG to provide lots of options

for emojis, including variations of skin color for emojis that

include one person or body part. (In unsupported programs,

EmojiOne glyphs revert to black and white.) To add an emoji to

your text in Photoshop, use the Glyphs panel. (Make sure the

Glyphs panel is set to Entire Font in the menu directly below

the font name.) I suggest creating the original text using

TrajanColor so that you’re already working with an SVG font.

Then, with the Type tool active in your point or paragraph text,

open the Glyphs panel through Photoshop’s Window menu

and double-click the emoji you want to add.

There are some neat little tricks to EmojiOne that you

may find handy. If, for example, you double-click in the

Glyphs panel on the “U” in a blue circle followed by the “S”

in a blue circle, you replace the two characters with a round

version of the US flag. The flag for just about any nation for

which you know the two-letter abbreviation is easily added

using the letters in the blue circles. “P” followed by “T,” for

example, will add a round flag of Portugal. You’ll also find

the flag emojis near the bottom of the Glyphs panel, but

some of them—as small as they are—might be difficult to

identify. If you know the two-letter code for the country,

you’re far less likely to add the wrong flag and perhaps con-

fuse your message (or offend someone).

You can also double-click an emoji of a person in the

Glyphs panel, and then double-click on one of the various

circular skin colors in the panel to change the race or ethnicity

of the emoji.

There are more than 1,000 emojis in Photoshop’s Glyphs

panel for the EmojiOne font. You’ll find everything from the

above-mentioned smiley face and flags to various fingers

pointing in various directions (including the Mr. Spock

Vulcan salute) to dozens of vegetables, and even a few glyphs

that are unrecognizable. (Emojis originated in Japan and

some are culture-specific.)

Emojis should not be confused with the much older

“emoticons,” such as using the colon character with the

dash character and the right parenthesis [ :-) ] to represent a

smiley face, or substituting the semicolon for the colon for

a wink. In many fonts, typing the three-letter sequence will

automatically convert to the appropriate emoji. (It’s hard

to believe, but emoticons and numeric standardization to

express emotion in telegraphs date back to the middle of

the 19th century.) Keep in mind that while the EmojiOne

font is supported by a very limited number of programs,

the Apple OS and iOS offer the Apple Color Emoji font for

use with iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and Apple TV.

This font is also Android-compatible. Google also offers

emojis through the Noto Emoji program. n

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From the Help Desk