Photoshop Tips #1 - OpenType Features

I think it might help boost the graphic creativity here if everyone willing to share their tips and skills on graphic designs.

I will start by introduce your guys a new feature to the designers world (though some features were introduced as earlier as Photoshop 6) is the OpenType font standard jointly developed by Adobe & Microsoft.

Benefits of OpenType:

1. Combines PostScript 1 & TrueType into a single font
2. Takes advantage of Unicode character encoding
3. A single cross platform font between PC & Macintosh computers
4. Access to advanced typographic features

Adobe Creative Suite and Adobe Font Folio ships with over 100 and thousands of these OpenType fonts, and for this tutorial it will focus on the 'Adobe Calso Pro' font.

Other font designers and foundries also developed their own OpenType fonts with advanced features. Fonts like Liza Pro, Aphrodite Pro, Ministry Script, etc...

At the end I will summarize all of the OpenType advanced features.


Let's begin with a single example of how this is useful in Photoshop.
Go to Window/Character, open the Character Palette as shown below.



Change the Arial font type to Adobe Calso Pro.



This is where the full advantage of OpenType fonts occur.
Select, the Character Palette menu command and notice down towards the bottom the extra glyph features available to this font.



There is often a broader range of 'Font Styles' to choose from as captured below.



Select 'Ordinals' from the Glyphs list and it's easy to create numbered superscripts.



Select 'Ornaments' from the Glyphs list and the current font style is transformed into ornate symbols like the example below.
The below two lines use the same letters 'OpenType'.
The first line uses the Regular Font Style while the second line uses the Ornament glyph substitute.



Select 'Fractions' from the Glyphs list and it's easy to transform numeric fractions into its proper form.



Change the 'Font Style' from 'Regular' to 'Italic' and from the Glyph list choose 'Swash'.



This is a just a few items of interest into using OpenType fonts and certainly there are plenty of other variations worth exploring.
Do note that not every single OpenType contains these features or all the advanced features.

[Continue...]

Here are the list of OpenType advanced features:

Standard Ligatures

Are typographic replacements for certain pairs of characters, such as fi, fl, ff, ffi, and ffl.
Type with the Standard Ligatures and Discretionary Ligatures options unselected and selected.



Contextual Alternates

Are alternative characters included in some script typefaces to provide better joining behavior. For example, when using Caflisch Script Pro with contextual alternatives enabled, the letter pair “bl” in the word “bloom” is joined so that it looks more like handwriting.

Discretionary Ligatures

Are typographic replacement characters for letter pairs, such as ct, st, and ft.
Note: Although the characters in ligatures appear to be joined, they are fully editable and do not cause the spelling checker to flag a word erroneously.

Swash

Substitutes swash glyphs, stylized letter forms with extended strokes (exaggerated flourishes).

Old Style

Are numerals shorter than regular numerals, with some old style numerals descending below the type baseline.

Stylistic Alternates

Formats stylized characters that create a purely aesthetic effect.

Titling Alternatives

Formats characters (usually all in capitals) designed for use in large‑size settings, such as titles.

Ornaments

Are devices that add a personal signature to the type family and can be used as title page decoration, paragraph markers, dividers for blocks of text, or as repeated bands and borders.

Ordinals

Automatically formats ordinal numbers (such as 1st and 2nd) with superscript characters. Characters such as the superscript in the Spanish words segunda and segundo (2a and 2o) are also typeset properly.

Fractions

Automatically formats fractions; numbers separated by a slash (such as 1/2) are converted to a shilling fraction (such as ).

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Some Examples:

Woah, I didn't know that about the OpenType fonts, thanks for the tip!

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Wow, thanks for this man.
I'm very interested to try this out myself now.

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Oh, so THAT'S how to do ligatures! Thankies!

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