Taming the Lines (Photoshop)

I realize with this title, you might think this tip is about the dangers of Christmas shopping! No, I’m not talking about those lines. But there are lines sometimes in digital scrapbooking that need to be tackled. In fact, there are some things in digital scrapbooking that, if done the hard way, are pretty tedious. But once you figure out the easy way to do it, it is oh-so-simple! This is one of those areas!

Here I have a tag from the December 2009 Premier kit, Holiday, by Dianne Rigdon. When I put my type on it, it looks like this.

Ok, not too bad, but notice how the type sits on the line at first, but the further I go down, the more it floats above the lines? If you want to fix this the hard way, you’ll have to put each line of type on its own layer. (Please don’t try it that way.) If you want to fix this the easy way, follow along!

Step 1) Highlight the type

Double click on the thumbnail of the type layer in the Layers panel. This will highlight all of the type on that layer.

Step 2) Open the Character panel

If you don’t know how to open the Character panel, you can do it by choosing Window>Character.

Step 3) Adjust the leading in the Character panel

We’re going to adjust the vertical distance between each line, called the leading (pronounced “ledding”). To do this, click on the down-facing arrow to the right of the word “Auto”, then choose a number from the drop-down menu. Rarely do I choose the right number the first time, but once I choose a number, I can use my up or down arrow keys to increase or decrease the leading until it fits.

Step 4) When you want to be picky…

As you can see from the image above, at 18pt it looks pretty good, and 17pt was not enough, 19pt was too much. But if I could decrease the leading from 18 just a tiny bit, it would fit perfectly. So, I highlighted 18pt and typed in 17.9pt.

Ok, I know that was being really picky, but there will be times when typing in an amount like this will make a big difference!

Step 5) Accept the changes

Click on the check mark in the Options bar to accept the changes to your type.

Step 6) Close the Character panel

You can close the Character panel by clicking on the symbol in the upper right hand corner. This might be an “x” or a double arrow.

Now my page is complete, including the type I easily and quickly fit on a tag with lines. Of course this method will work for anything with lines—tags, journaling mats, and paper. Give it a try and you’ll see for yourself how easy it is!

Credits: Tutorial and page by Jenny Binder, www.HeirloomScrapbooks.com. Page created with Dianne Rigdon’s kit, Holiday, this month’s Premier kit. Fonts used: Orator Std, and CK Ali’s Hand Official.

Download a PDF version of this “Taming the Lines” tutorial.

Windows: Right click on the link and choose “Save Target As” or a similar command.
Mac: Click on the link to download the file.

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