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Photoshop’s “Convert To Outlines” Command
Unlike InDesign and Illustrator, Photoshop does not have a “Convert To Outlines” command for outlining type in production situations…or does it?
More than one might expect, I often find myself creating my layouts in Photoshop rather than InDesign. Image-centric layouts, with only a few lines of type, are often more easily produced right in Photoshop, where the images will be coming from anyway. But there’s always the problem of getting the layout ready for the printer because Photoshop is way behind when it comes to packaging fonts and preflighting, all very important things when it comes to print production. InDesign makes it easy, but Photoshop wasn’t really designed for this even though it has most tools needed for print layout.
Read more on Photoshop’s “Convert To Outlines” Command…
Unlike InDesign and Illustrator, Photoshop does not have a “Convert To Outlines” command for outlining type in production situations…or does it?
More than one might expect, I often find myself creating my layouts in Photoshop rather than InDesign. Image-centric layouts, with only a few lines of type, are often more easily produced right in Photoshop, where the images will be coming from anyway. But there’s always the problem of getting the layout ready for the printer because Photoshop is way behind when it comes to packaging fonts and preflighting, all very important things when it comes to print production. InDesign makes it easy, but Photoshop wasn’t really designed for this even though it has most tools needed for print layout.
“Convert To Outlines” is the command available in InDesign and Illustrator that creates vector art out of type. Unfortunately, not only does Photoshop fail to package fonts, but there’s no Convert To Outlines command per se. However, there is a command that does practically the same thing:
Layer –> Type –> Convert to Shape
This command converts a type layer into a shape layer, which is a layer filled with a single color and masked by a path based on the pre-existing type. With this command, you can “convert to outlines” easily.
I often like to duplicate my type layers, turn off their visibility and stow them somewhere in the file so I can return to them if there’s changes to the type layers.
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Excellent suggestion!
Formerly I’d depend on Illustrator for this. Thanks for expanding my thinking a bit.
DESIGNORATI
Thanks for the tip. I’m a new Photoshop user and was working on a file that required outlining the text. I hope this satisfies the printer, but your tip was the only one I found worthwhile!
Thanks!
Hi,
I have a catalog cover I am doing and I have the file in Photoshop. I did not rasterize the text to outlines, but did flatten the file and saved it as a .TIFF so I could use it in Quark.
Will my text still print clearly.
I read somewhere that flatten the file in Photoshop will also produce the same results as ‘rasterizing the text’ layer. Is that true?
thanks,
Alyssa
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Thank you, Jeremy, for your information. I would like to also create simply page design with Photoshop, as my work is also image-based, but I do not understand what the exact workflow is after one converts the text to ‘shape’. I have never understood what exactly one does from that step to create a PDF that can then go to the printer and be assured that the text will print razor-sharp.
Thanks again, Jeremy.
Hi nice tip, however i usually rasterize my texts. Is it different or they both works the same way?
Thank you, Jeremy, for your information. I would like to also create simply page design with Photoshop, as my work is also image-based, but I do not understand what the exact workflow is after one converts the text to ’shape’. I have never understood what exactly one does from that step to create a PDF that can then go to the printer and be assured that the text will print razor-sharp.
Thanks again, Jeremy.
It’s been awhile since I’ve worked with PDFs in Photoshop (I use native files now that the Creative Suite optimizes that kind of workflow) but as long as you retain the vector shapes and save to PDF in Photoshop, you should see sharp text in your PDF even when you zoom in close in Acrobat. If the type remains sharp, you’ll have quality text.
DESIGNORATI
Hi!
I have a question..
when you say go into Layer –> Type –> Convert to Shape
my computer doesn’t give me the last option ‘convert to shape’?
it gives me 5 other options
Layers – Type – then..
-Horizontal (which is seleccted)
-Vertical
-Anti Alias off
-Anti Alias on (which is selected)
or
-Warp text?
I have a Mac computer and don’t know if this makes a difference?
We need them printed this week and the printer said to google it, i can’t find anything except this option and have no idea what to do?
Are you able to help?
Kirra
You should be seeing more than that. I run CS5 on a Mac and the Layer > Type menu has all the options you mentioned plus a few more, including Convert to Shape. Maybe older version of Photoshop have it someplace else, but this article is four years old so it’s true for at least CS2 or CS3 and later.
DESIGNORATI
Hi Jeremy,
I’m designing a logo for a university club. Using the Layer> Type> Convert to shape seems to make my crisp text turn fuzzy. It goes back to normal on rasterizing, but since I want to get the logo printed on a T-shirt, I want to keep it a vector. Wikipedia tells me rasterizing it means its not a vector anymore. But they also say text in photoshop text layers are are automatically vectors. The only reason I am trying to convert the text to shapes is because its a requirement from the printer. Is there any way to to do this without making the text fuzzy?