STOP Scaling Text in Photoshop! Solve The Paragraph Style Font-Size Problem

Did you know that scaling your text and changing the font size is not the same thing? Although they both seemingly give you the same results and font size, they're doing something completely different under the hood. In this video, I will show you how to fix a problem that arises when free transforming text layers in Photoshop. Hi, I'm Jesus Ramirez from the Photoshop Training Channel. Free transforming your text is not always the best option to adjust the font size when applying paragraph and character styles. In this video, I'm going to show you how to solve a problem that comes up when you transform your text instead of using the true font size. First, I'll start by showing you what paragraph styles are and how they can help you in your workflow. Then, I'll show you the problem that comes up with free transforming text. And finally, I'll show you how to use a hack to solve the issue. Okay, let's get started. So this is the image that I was working with when I ran into that problem that we're going to discuss in this video. This is an infographic that shows the keyboard shortcuts for Photoshop. By the way, if you're interested in downloading this graphic, you can find it on my Pinterest page. I'm going to place a link to it down below in the description. So in this graphic, you'll see that there is text that describes the keyboard shortcut for the tools and commands in Photoshop. So if you hold the control or command key on the Mac and H, you'll hide the extra. So that's what the orange text represents. And as you can see, this document has a lot of text layers. And I wanted to set it up in a way that it's easy to edit. So that if I change my mind and want to change the font or color, I don't have to go through each individual text layer to make that change. To do this in Photoshop, you can take advantage of a feature called paragraph styles. If you go into window and select paragraph styles, this panel will open up. From here, you can create a paragraph style, which allows you to control multiple text layers from within one dialog box. You can set font size, color, or any other attribute that you can apply to a text layer. If you're familiar with web design, this is very similar to CSS, where you apply a style to something to give it a specific look, and you can control it all from within that style sheet. In Photoshop, you can control it all through these paragraph styles. For example, I made a paragraph style called shortcuts. If I double click on that, this window will appear, and you can see the styles that I've applied. For example, the color. Maybe I changed my mind and I no longer want the keyboard shortcuts to be blue. Maybe I want them to be green. So I can change the color, press okay, and the change is applied to all the layers that have that paragraph style. And of course, I can change font size, font family, anything. So let me change the font family just so that we can see the difference. I'm going to select brush script, just so it is vastly different than what I have now, and you'll see all the text layers update on the keyboard, and I'll press okay. So that's how paragraph styles work, and the problem that I was running into is that Photoshop doesn't treat all the text layers equally. If you have a text layer that was distorted by pressing control T, command T on the Mac, it will appear different when you apply a paragraph style. And that is because Photoshop is applying a proportional transformation, and it has something to do with the way Photoshop scales layers. Let me simplify this and show you what I mean. I'm going to go into this file, and we have two groups. They're exactly the same, but we're going to treat them differently. We have these text layers that read small, medium, and large on both groups, and all the layers, if you notice by selecting the horizontal type tool, they all have the same font and they're all 100 points. See that? I'm going to click on all of them so that you can see that they're all exactly the same. Now before I show you what the problem is, I briefly want to explain how to create a paragraph style. That way, you can take advantage of them in your projects. So first, make sure that a layer that is not a text layer is selected because it will make it easier to work with. So click on this new paragraph style icon, and there's our paragraph style. I can double click on it, and the first step is to rename it, so I'm just going to call it green text because we're going to create green text. That's going to be a paragraph style. And I'll increase the font size, I'll make it 60 points, and I'll change the font family to that same brush script font from before. And why not? I'll use that same or a similar green, and I'll press okay. And I'll press okay one more time, and that defines our paragraph style. Now I can apply the paragraph style simply by selecting any one of these text layers, like this one here, and clicking on the paragraph style from this panel. If the paragraph style doesn't automatically apply, and you see that plus icon, you can click on the reset icon to apply the paragraph style. I'll do the same thing for the remaining two layers. I'll click on the medium text layer, then I'll select the green text paragraph style, reset it, and I'll do the same thing for the large text layer. So now, these three layers have the same paragraph style. If I change my mind, and I want to select a different color for my green text, maybe I want a darker green, I don't have to go into each individual layer and make that change. I can change it all from within this dialog box. So I can also change the font to maybe Arial, and press okay. So that's the advantage of using paragraph styles. In an infographic like this one, you can see the power of organizing your text layers into paragraph styles. If you decide to change something later, it will be a lot easier to change one paragraph style than changing each individual text layer. Obviously, if you're working on a small infographic with maybe one or two text layers, then this probably wouldn't be an advantage, but for something more complex, it definitely helps. Especially if you're working for somebody else, and that person wants to make changes, you won't have to spend a whole lot of time making the adjustments. You can do it with just a few clicks. Anyway, I'm going to go back into this document. And before we move on, I just briefly want to explain one more thing. Photoshop also has something called a character style. Character styles are sort of like the overrides for a paragraph style. So always create a paragraph style first, and if you need to override something, then create a character style. For example, one of the reasons that you might need a character style is to add an underline. So let me just click on something that is not a text layer. I'll create this new character style, I'll double click on it, and I'll call it underline. And then I'll click on this underline checkbox, and press okay. So now, I can come into one of these layers, for example, the medium layer, and highlight part of the text, and then select underline. Notice that Photoshop will only add the underline to the area that I selected. And if I decide that I want the underline to have a different color or a different font, I can do so by editing this character style. Now if I double click on it, watch what happens. It's going to apply it to the entire layer. See that? So you don't really want to do that. So let me undo that by pressing Control Z, Command Z on the Mac, and just select something that is not a text layer. Then when I click on the underline character style, it will only apply it to the original characters I selected. And now you can apply different settings. For example, I can change the color. I'll make it red, and I'll change the font family. I'll use that same brush script we've been using. Notice that all the changes are happening on the fly, and I'll press okay when I'm done. So this is how character styles work. They override paragraph styles. So always start with a paragraph style, and only use a character style if you need to. But anyway, we're going to undo all of this by going into file, revert, which is going to get me back to the way my file looked like when I first opened it or last saved it. In this case, when I first opened it, since I haven't saved the file. And now I'm going to show you the problem that happens when you scale by transforming a layer rather than scaling by true font point size. So with the layers in this blue group, I'm just going to change the font size by going into the font size points here. And this small one, I'm going to change it to 50 points. So half of 100. There it is. I'll leave the medium at 100, and I'll change the large to 200. So double the points, large, medium, and small. And I know that a lot of people on YouTube and other instructors say that adjusting the font size and scaling a layer gives you the same results. And although that's technically true, they do look the same, they're not the same. Behind the scenes, things are different, and scaling a text layer by using the transform feature could actually lead to some problems, especially when you use character styles or paragraph styles. Let me show you what I mean by that. I'm going to select the large text layer in the transformation group. Then I'll press Ctrl T on Windows, Command T on the Mac, and I can click and drag on these handles to scale the layer. But to accurately scale the layer, I'm going to go into the options bar, make sure that I click on this chain link icon to scale proportionately, and I'll type in 200%, which will make the text twice as large. And I'm just going to align it to the other layer, just so that you can see that they look pretty much the same. And for the small layer, I'm going to change that to 50%. So I'll press Ctrl T, Command T to transform. Make sure that the width and height are linked, and type in 50%. So now that I've made those changes, you'll see that the text looks pretty much the same. And again, I'm just going to move it over just a tiny little bit so that you can see that it's basically the same, right? No difference. If I select the text tool and click on the small text layer, you'll notice that it's 50, just like the one we scaled down by using the font size. There it is, small, 50. Medium is the same at 100. We didn't touch the one in the bottom either, so they're both the same at 100. And large is 200 points here on the bottom on the transformation, and also 200 points on top. So at this point, you might be wondering, well, what do you mean that they're different? They're exactly the same point size, and they look the same. There's really no difference. So what's the difference about it? The problem comes into play when you apply the paragraph styles and character styles because of the underlying transformation matrix that was applied to these text layers. So behind the scenes, in the code somewhere, Photoshop is applying a proportional transformation that is going to distort how these text layers look. Let me show you what the problem is. I'm going to create a new paragraph style, so I'll click on this new paragraph style icon. I'll double click on it, and I'll call it green text. I'll change the color to green, press OK, and I'll change the font size to 150 points. And I'll change the font family to brush script, and I'll press OK. And what I'm going to do now is apply the paragraph style to these three layers. And as you will see, in this case, they're all going to look the same, right? Just as we expect. Brush script is the font, the font size is 150, everything looks great. But watch what happens when we apply the same to the layers that we transform by scaling them. So I'm going to select the small layer first, go into green text, and apply that paragraph style. Then I'll go into the medium and do the same, and the large, and also apply this paragraph style. Notice the difference. Notice that the large one is bigger, because we didn't alter it at all. And the small one is a lot smaller. So what size are they? The large one, the one that is currently selected, is 300 points. That is double the size of the 150 that we set in the paragraph style. Can you guess what the small one will be? Half the size of the 150 that we set in the paragraph style, which is 75 points. So why is this happening? This is happening because Photoshop, again, is using that underlying transformation and it's applying it on top of the paragraph style, which is why you can't get the text to be the same size. So if you want to take advantage of paragraph styles and have total control of your text, unfortunately, you cannot use a transformation method on your text. And there's no real way of removing that transformation. There is a hack, and I'm going to show you that now. Unfortunately, you do need the newest version of Photoshop for this hack to work. So if you're in an older version, there's no real way around it. And maybe somebody knows a different hack for an older version that you could leave down below in the comments. But for the newer version, there is one hack that I know of. So let me show you how that works. If you want to remove the proportional transformation, that transformation, that, that algorithm matrix that's behind the scenes out of these layers, then this is what you can do. You can go into the libraries panel, and then from there, just use any regular layer. For example, this medium layer, and click on this add content icon and select character style. Photoshop will add that character style to the libraries panel. But when it does that, Photoshop will remove the transformation that was calculated into this layer. So I can now apply this character style to the layers that have the transformation applied to them. So I can go into this small text box, and I can just click, and it will apply that style. I'll do the same thing for the medium, even though it doesn't need it, and I'll do the same thing for the large. So now Photoshop removed that transformation that was embedded into the layer, and we could now work with paragraph styles, just like we could with any other text layer. I can come in here and change my green text to something else, and actually, just to not confuse you guys, I'm just going to make sure that no other text layer is selected, and then I'll double click on this green text character style. And now I can change it to maybe red and change it to a different point size. So maybe we'll do 72, which will make it a lot smaller. And notice that these three in the bottom didn't change. Well, we have to now apply the character style. So hit the refresh button, select the layer, hit the refresh button, select the layer, hit the refresh button. And at this point, all six text layers are being controlled by the paragraph style, and you can adjust the font size, and they will all look the same. But that is the hack that you need to do to remove the transformation that's embedded into that text layer, unfortunately. There's no other way of doing it. Even if you go into the properties panel, there's nothing that you can reset here under transform. Some of you may be thinking that you can go into window and character and select this reset character option in the flyout menu. That won't work either. Like I said, the only solution that I found to this problem was to create a character style in the libraries panel. So I hope that this tutorial, although a bit technical, helps you create better infographics and helps you understand more how Photoshop transforms layers behind the scene. If this is your first time at the Photoshop Training Channel, then don't forget to click on that subscribe and notification button so that you don't miss any new Photoshop tutorials. Thank you so much for watching. I'll talk to you again in the next Photoshop tutorial.