373TExT AnD SHAPES
aS YOu’ve nO doubt discerned by now, Photoshop’s pri-
mary mission is to correct and manipulate digital photographs and
scanned artwork. (If this comes as a shock, I’m afraid you’re going to
have to go back and re-read—gosh how should I put this?—the entire
book!) But there are two exceptions. The culprits are text and shapes,
two features that have nothing whatsoever to do with correcting or
manipulating digital photos, scanned artwork, or pixels in general.
Where text and shapes are concerned, Photoshop
is more illustration program than image editor. You
can create single lines of type or set type inside col-
umns. You can edit typos and check spelling. You
have access to all varieties of formatting attributes,
from those as common as typeface to those as ob-
scure as fractional character widths. You can even
attach type to a path. In addition to type, you can
augment your designs with rectangles, polygons,
and custom predrawn symbols—the kinds of geo-
metric shapes that you take for granted in a drawing
program but rarely see in an image editor.
All this may seem like overkill, the sort of off-topic
largess that tends to burden every piece of consumer
software these days. But although you may not need
text and shapes for all your work, they’re incredibly
useful on those occasions when you do. Whether
you want to prepare a bit of specialty type, mock up
a commercial message as in Figure 11-1, or design
a Web page, Photoshop’s text and shape functions
are precisely the tools you need. If you have any
doubts, they’ll be allayed as soon as you watch the
video that accompanies this lesson.
This text acts as a label to the above graphic.
If only I had something to say.
Figure 11-1.