Editing Text in Photoshop

You can apply all the options described in this chapter as you enter text, or later, when you’re rearranging words or fixing typos and other errors. To make changes to the text itself, just follow these steps:
1. Open a saved image or create a new Photoshop document.
2. Select the Type tool.
3. Select the type layer you want to modify, or click in the type in the document.
4. You can begin typing at the place you clicked, backspace to eliminate characters, or drag the mouse from the insertion point to select characters to copy, delete, or format.
5. When you’re done entering your changes, click the Commit button.

Finding and replacing text
You can make global changes in a text layer, switching all occurrences of a set of characters to another string. For example, you might have typed Ghandi a few dozen times before remembering that the Mahatma’s name is spelled Gandhi. To replace text, follow these steps:

1. Open a saved image or create a new Photoshop document.
2. Select the type layer you want to modify.
3. Choose Edit➪Find and Replace Text.
4. Type or paste the text you want to replace in the Find What box in the dialog box.
5. Enter the replacement text in the Change To box.
6. If you want the search to locate only text that exactly matches the case of the Find string (that is FREEdom but not Freedom), choose the Case Sensitive option.
7. To ignore the search word embedded in another word (say, to find the but not there or they), choose Whole Word Only.
8. Click Find Next.
9. As each string is found, select whether you want to
- Change: This changes only the string of text just located. Click this button if you are looking for one particular occurrence.
- Change All: This changes all occurrences of the search text with the replacement string in your text.
- Change/Find: This changes the found text and then looks for the next occurrence.

Checking your spelling
Photoshop can check your spelling by using an internal dictionary that you can update with words of your own. Even though you’re not likely to enter huge amounts of text in Photoshop, that’s no excuse for misspelling the words that you do include. Indeed, because it’s so difficult to change text after you’ve rasterized a text layer, the spell checker can save you a great deal of work. Here’s how to use it:

1. Open a saved image or create a new Photoshop document.
2. Make sure that you’ve specified the correct language in the Character palette’s language menu.
3. Select the text that you want to check, or select a type layer to check all the text on that layer.
4. Choose Edit➪Check Spelling.
5. When Photoshop identifies a possible error in the Not in Dictionary box, click Change to substitute the recommended correction for the word that is spelled incorrectly.
Or you can choose from one of these options:
- Ignore: Leaves the word alone and continues to check the next text.
- Ignore All: Ignores all instances of the word for the rest of the spellcheck session.
- Suggestions: Choose a different word from the Suggestions text box, or type in the correct spelling yourself.
- Change All: Corrects all occurrences of the misspelled word.
- Add: Add the unfamiliar word to Photoshop’s dictionary.
Deselect the Check All Layers option to check only the currently selected layer.
6. Click Done when you’re finished.
The Check Spelling dialog box closes.