Photoshop CS and crummy text

Has text handling gotten worse in Photoshop CS instead of better?!?

[vieth]

I just upgraded to Photoshop CS and I'm finding the text engine seems to be worse than ever! ...especially with kerning. In order to mimic our HTML CSS styles in our web graphics, I do a *lot* of text in photoshop with the following combination of styles...
- Verdana
- 11 pt.
- Bold
- Anti-alaising: "None"
- Default for all other settings, like scale, tracking, baseline shift, etc.
I'm finding that, with Photoshop CS, kerning/tracking with these default settings is worse than ever! Some letters have 5 pixels of space between them, and others are overlapping! What gives?!? I don't want to have to tweak the tracking for each individual letter to get decent looking text. Am I overlooking something, or is Photoshop CS this bad? Any tips?
- Vieth

[jusdrum]

It sounds like you have bug or a corrupted file. Photoshop CS has an excellent text engine.

I would try reinstalling the app. There's no way it should overlap text and then put 5 pixels of space in between.

While this post may not solve your problem, it should help you narrow down the problem knowing that CS is not the problem.

[vieth]

I forgot to mention... I'm running Photoshop CS on top of Windows Server 2003. Could there be something different about Server 2003 regarding fonts, text, etc?
- Vieth

[ileong]

Do you have problems with these fonts in other apps or only PS? I have never heard or seen any complaints like this about CS. If you just upgraded to CS, try reverting to your older version and see if there are still problems.

BTW, text smaller than 12pt should generally be aliased for web use.

[vieth]

Now it's working fine. I don't know what did the trick. I think it was the particular image file that had the problem. I must have had some adjustment layer or setting for that image that was screwing things up. The only other thing I can think of is that I turned off color management, but that shouldn't have anything to do with it. You mentioned anti-alaising text smaller than 12 pt. for web use... I normally agree, except this particular text needs to match our HTML/CSS text which is Verdana, 11 pt., which, as you know, looks nice and crisp and easy to read in HTML. It is a font that is not meant to be anti-alaised at small sizes because it is deliberately designed for display on screen, used in software interfaces, etc, just like Tahoma. By the way, whoever said the text engine is Photoshop CS is better than ever is right; now that I've solved my little problem, I think the text looks great, and I'm really happy with the way underline no longer hugs the buttom of the letters too closely--a huge improvement for those of use who occassionally need to make text in a graphic appear to be a blue hyperlink (underlined).