Composers for Asian scripts

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Illustrator includes support for Indic, Middle Eastern, and South East Asian languages. You can create documents using text from these languages. The additional Middle Eastern and South Asian Composer provides correct word shaping for many non-Western scripts.

Note:

Text features across Adobe applications do not necessarily have feature parity as each application can rely on different text engines. Additionally, text features can vary according to the primary usage of the application (image editing, page layout, illustration, and so on), so the preservation of formatting, style, and editability across applications can also vary according to the type treatments you choose to apply.

South Eastern Asian (SEA) languages or scripts are not currently supported on all Adobe products. Moving SEA text from an Adobe app that currently supports SEA scripts to an application that does not support them, will likely result in a loss of some or all of the text copy, formatting, etc. In this case, note the following:

  • Image files may need to be flattened before moving from Photoshop to other applications.
  • Text files from Adobe Illustrator may need to be converted to outlines prior to usage in other applications.
  • Text conversions may result in a loss of editability when moved from one application to another.

Supported Asian languages

The Middle Eastern and South Asian composer supports the following languages:

Indic

Middle Eastern

South East Asian

  • Bengali
  • Gujarati
  • Hindi
  • Kannada
  • Malayalam
  • Marathi
  • Oriya
  • Punjabi
  • Tamil
  • Telugu

  • Arabic
  • Hebrew
For details, see Arabic and Hebrew.

  • Thai
  • Sinhalese
  • Burmese 
  • Khmer
  • Lao

Install relevant language and font packs (Windows)

To use these languages properly on Windows, you must install the language and font packs for the particular language you want to use.

For details, see Microsoft's Help documentation: Language Packs.

Create documents using Asian languages

To create a new document using one of the supported languages:

  1. Choose Edit > Preferences > Type.
  2.  Select South East Asian Options or Show Indic Options. 
  3. Open a document.
  4. Create a type layer using the Type tool.
  5. In the Character panel, set your Language to any of the new languages: Thai, Burmese, Lao, Sinhalese, or Khmer.
  6. Based on the language you select, set an appropriate font. For example, if you choose Thai language, set a Thai font such as Adobe Thai or Noto Sans Thai.
  7. Copy and paste text composed in the language that you choose. If you have a language-specific keyboard set-up, simply type the text.
Setting to switch on East Asian and Indic options in Preferences
Enabling East Asian and Indic options through Preferences

Select a composer

When you enable East Asian or Indic language options, the following composers are available in the flyout menu of the Paragraph panel (available in the Control panel or through Ctrl+T):

  • Middle Eastern & South Asian Single-line Composer
  • Middle Eastern & South Asian Every-line Composer
Composers available when you switch on Indic or South East Asian language options
Composers available when you enable Indic or South East Asian language options

Note:

In Preferences > Type, you can select only one of the Indic and East Asian options at a time. You can choose to have both options off or select one of the two.

Select a language

You can select a relevant language option in the Language drop-down menu of the Character section in the Properties panel, as shown below. This option is used to check hyphenation and spelling.

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