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The possibilities for creating images with text in Photoshop are exciting. By adding text to your photo projects you will be able to make your own postcards, add slogans to photo collages, create advertisements, web site graphics, logos, signs, color photo brochures, flyers, and much more.

The following are a few of the things you can do with text in Photoshop.

Moving Text

One of the benefits of Photoshop’s system of layers is that you can move text around. In fact, you can move each letter of a word independently of each other. This allows the user to perfectly position text for the best composition.

3D Text Effects

You can create shadows behind text, give it texture or make it glow.

Put Photos inside Text

With Photoshop it is easy to create text with photo image inside. In other words instead of creating a solid color or texture you can fill the text with a photographic image. This is only useful when you are working with very large fonts.

Curved Text

You can even create text that is curved or is in different shapes.

You can see that the possibilities for incorporating text into your images are limitless. The most important thing to consider when working with text in Photoshop is to choose the right font for the job. Some fancy fonts may not be strong enough to show up or print well over a busy image. Experiment with different fonts and font sizes for the best result. Also, if you plan on printing your project don’t assume that because it looks good on your monitor that it will print well. Print your image to see how the text looks on paper. One way to make your text stand out is to use blending options including shadows and various filters.

A huge pet peeve of mine is when people abbreviate words in text messages, especially when I have no idea what the abbreviation stands for. I cringe when I get a message saying, “TY” or “Wadup?” What is wrong with typing, “Thank you,” or “Hi, what’s new?” I just don’t get it. I know I am in the minority when I confess that I use proper grammar while texting, but I just could not sleep knowing I sent something wherein the grammar looked as if was written by a first grader.

I get bothered when people text me with the abbreviated words as I have a heck of a time trying to figure out their meaning. About a month ago, a friend kept texting the letters BRB. For the longest time I had no idea why she kept writing that so I sent her a text asking what BRB meant. She texted back with, “Be right back” and somehow I missed the connection and thought she was going to tell me when she got back to her phone. Doh! Sometimes I amaze myself at the things I miss in life. Oh, for those of you who are slow, like, say, me, BRB means “be right back”. Please tell me I am not the only one who did not know this. LOL.

LOL. Let’s just talk about this one for a minute. LOL, or laugh out loud, is meant to be used to tell someone you are laughing or have written something funny. If the LOL is needed to indicate it is time to laugh, most likely, it wasn’t funny in the first place. If you have to tell them it is funny and they aren’t laughing, most likely, it’s not. Makes my head spin.

TY for reading this. I will BRB to write more later and if I make a joke, I will try to make sure it is funny. LOL.

In written forms of communication, smileys or emoticons are used to portray the mood of the message. To make the smiley faces, colons or semicolons are used for the eyes and various letters are used for the mouth to display the emotion. For instance a smiley face with a wink and a smile is a semicolon with a closing parenthesis. Example ; ) For a frown a colon with a left hand parentheses. Example : ( . A big smile is a colon with a capital D. Example : D

While smileys are made purely of text characters, emoticons are little yellow faces that can be loaded from smileyCentral. Both display emotions to enhance the message of the text.

The acceptance of the smileys for informal and written messages are largely due to the abundance of communications by text messages, message boards and instant messaging (IM).

With the increasing use of the internet and wireless digital telecommunications, the adoption of the smileys has taken prominence. This movement was initiated by the youth and there is probably not a young person out there who does not know the meaning or usage of smileys.

The emotions displayed have evolved from just happiness and sadness to disbelief, anger, playfulness and surprise.

Females use the emoticons much more often than males. This may be due to feeling more comfortable in expressing emotions or they may be more versed in using telecommunication nuance techniques.

Those who criticize the use of emoticons as being detrimental to the depth of human communication do not address the benefits of using them for quicker messages with more intimate text messages.

Smileys have all been figured out and do not have the range of emotions that emoticons can express. The future of these symbols seem to have hit a plateau and the future or more nuanced symbols would require a wider range of symbols for longer text messages.