By Colin Smith
of PhotoshopCafe.com

Dateline: April 14, 2003
Volume 1, Number 1

Photoshop doesn't ship with any text style sheet options, right? Wrong. By using Photoshop 7's new tool sets we can create our own text style sheets. Think of style sheets as saved formatting for your text. This lets you create very consistent-looking documents and can also save you a lot of time. So enough talk, let's hit the bricks! First, apply the desired text to your image, as shown at left.

Now apply the text and with the Text tool selected, click on the box in the top-left of the toolbar. The tool preset box will drop down. Select "Current Tool Only" to show only the text options and hide all the other tool presets.

Click the arrow on the top-right and choose New Tool Preset for the drop down menu.

Give it a title. I entered "White Text".

You will see your new preset appear in the list.

When you enter some text and change the options, Photoshop will use the most recent settings. Here the font, size and color have been changed.

Pick the Text tool and choose the "White Text" preset.

Begin to type and notice that all your settings have been recalled. The approach I've just shown you can save you hours. You can even combine this feature with Actions and batch process a whole pile of images at once to produce quick templates. You paid a lot of money for that computer, so work smarter and make that sucker earn its keep!

See you at the café: PhotoshopCafe.com

Colin

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Colin Smith is the founder of photoshopcafe.com, a thriving Photoshop community. He is also a regular columnist for the NAPP members site and Planet Photoshop. He has authored and co-authored 6 books including New Masters of Photoshop, Foundation Photoshop, Photoshop Most Wanted, Photoshop Trade Secrets and Photoshop to Dreamweaver. He creates video tutorials that are available at www.photoshopcd.com. When he is not writing, Colin makes his crust as a freelance graphic designer. See his portfolio at www.pixeloverload.com.