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Asian type

Photoshop provides several options for working with Chinese, Japanese, and Korean type. 

Note:

Your operating system must support the languages and fonts in which you wish to work. Consult your system software manufacturer for more information.

Display and set Asian type options

Photoshop 23.0 (October 2021) release now includes seamless unified typographical support for Japanese, Chinese, and Korean without having to select the East Asian text engine in Preferences or the Paragraph panel flyout menu.  

Additionally, all East Asian advanced typographic features will be automatically available and grouped together in the Photoshop Type Layer Properties panel. They are still available in the Character and Paragraph panels by selecting "East Asian Features" in the Paragraph panel flyout menu.

You can also control how font names are displayed—in English or in the native language.

  1. Choose Edit > Preferences > Type (Windows) or Photoshop > Preferences > Type (Mac OS).

  2. Select from the following options:

    Show Font Names in English

    Displays Asian font names in English.

    East Asian (Photoshop and Photoshop CS6) or Show Asian Text Options (CS5)

    Displays Asian type options in the Character and Paragraph panels.

    Character, Paragraph, and Type Layer Properties panel
    Character, Paragraph, and Type Layer Properties panel

Reduce spacing around Asian type characters using tsume

Tsume reduces the space around a character by a specified percentage value. As a result, the character itself is not stretched or squeezed. Instead, the space between the character’s bounding box and the em box is compressed. When tsume is added to a character, spacing around both sides of the character are reduced by an equal percentage.

  1. Select the characters you want to adjust.
  2. In the Character panel, enter or select a percentage for Tsume  . The greater the percentage, the tighter the compression between characters. At 100% (the maximum value), there is no space between the character’s bounding box and its em box.

With the Photoshop 23.0 (October 2021) release, Tsume can also be accessed from the Type Layer Properties panel. 

Specify how leading is measured in Asian type

  1. Select the paragraphs you want to adjust.
  2. Choose a leading option from the Paragraph panel menu.

    Top-to-top Leading

    Measures the spacing between lines of type from the top of one line to the top of the next line. When you use top‑to‑top leading, the first line of type in a paragraph is aligned flush with the top of the bounding box.

    Bottom-to-bottom Leading

    For horizontal type, measures the space between lines of type from the type baseline. When you use bottom-to-bottom leading, space appears between the first line of type and the bounding box. A check mark indicates which option is selected.

    Note:

    The leading option you choose does not affect the amount of leading between lines, only how the leading is measured.  

Use tate‑chu‑yoko

Tate‑chu‑yoko is a block of horizontal type laid out within vertical type lines. Using tate‑chu‑yoko makes it easier to read half-width characters such as numbers, dates, and short foreign words in vertical text.

Photoshop tate-chu-yoko
Numerals without tate‑chu‑yoko (left) compared to numerals rotated with tate‑chu‑yoko (right)

  1. Select the characters you want to rotate.
  2. Choose Tate‑Chu‑Yoko from the Character panel menu. A checkmark indicates that the option is turned on.

    With the Photoshop 23.0 (October 2021) release, you can also choose the icon from the Type Layer Properties panel. In this case, the highlighted icon indicates the option is turned on.

    Note:

    Using tate‑chu‑yoko does not prevent you from editing and formatting type; you can edit and apply formatting options to rotated characters just as you do to other characters.

Align Asian characters with mojisoroe

Mojisoroe is the alignment of characters in Asian type. When a line of text contains different sizes of characters, you can specify how to align text to the largest characters in the line: to the top, center, or bottom of the em box (right, center, and left for vertical frames), to the roman baseline, or to the top or bottom of the ICF box (right or left for vertical frames). ICF (Ideographic Character Space) is the average height and width used by the font designer to design the ideographic characters that comprise a font.

Photoshop Character alignment options
Character alignment options

A. Small characters aligned to the bottom B. Small characters aligned to the center C. Small characters aligned to the top 

  1. In the Character panel menu, choose an option from the Character Alignment submenu:

    Roman Baseline

    Aligns the small characters in a line to the large character.

    Em box Top/Right, Em box Center, or Em box Bottom/Left

    Aligns the small characters in a line to the specified position of the large character’s em box. In vertical text frames, Em box Top/Right aligns the text to the right of the em box, and Em box Bottom/Left aligns the text to the left of the em box.

    ICF Top/Right and ICF Bottom/Left

    Aligns the small characters in a line to the ICF specified by the large characters. In vertical text frames, ICF Top/Right aligns the text to the right of the ICF, and ICF Bottom/Left aligns the text to the left of the ICF.

    Note:

    With the Photoshop 23.0 (October 2021) release, you can also choose an option from the Type Layer Properties panel.

Specify left and right underlining with Asian type

  1. Select vertical type.
  2. Choose either Underline Left or Underline Right from the Character panel flyout menu.

Set Asian OpenType font options

Asian OpenType fonts may include a number of features that aren’t available in PostScript and TrueType fonts. It is usually best to use any weights of Kozuka Gothic Pr6N and Kozuka Mincho Pr6N OpenType fonts. These fonts have the largest collection of glyphs of the Asian fonts produced by Adobe.

  1. With the Type tool selected, do one of the following:

    • On an existing type layer, select the characters or type objects to which you want to apply the setting.

    • Click the image to create a new type layer.

  2. In the Character panel, make sure that an Asian OpenType Pro font is selected.

  3. From the Character panel flyout menu, choose an OpenType option.

    Japanese 78    Substitutes the standard glyph with the jp78‑variant glyph.

    Japanese Expert    Substitutes the standard glyph with the expert-variant glyphs.

    Japanese Traditional    Substitutes the standard glyph with the traditional-variant glyph.

    Proportional Metrics    Substitutes the half-width and the full-width glyphs with the proportional glyph.

    Kana    Substitutes the standard kana glyph with the horizontally optimized kana glyph for horizontal layout. However, the differences are often very subtle.

    Roman Italics    Substitutes the standard proportional glyph with the italic glyph.

    For more information, see Apply OpenType features.

On-canvas glyph alternatives and Glyphs panel

When you're working in a Type layer, you can select a glyph to quickly view alternatives to it right on the canvas. Clicking the > icon in the alternatives grid takes you to the Glyphs panel.

  1. Turn on the on-canvas glyph alternatives feature, select Preferences > Type > Enable Type Layer Glyph Alternates.
  2. On an existing type layer, select the characters for which you want alternate glyphs.
    Search for glyphs in Photoshop
    Search for alternative glyphs on an existing type layer

  3. Select a glyph you want to use or click on the right arrow icon to open the Glyph panel.

    Select a glyph to open glyph panel in Photoshop
    Select a glyph to open glyph panel in Photoshop

  4. Hover over a glyph slot to get specific details such as glyph ID, Unicode value, OpenType feature, and the Unicode name of the glyph in question.

    Photoshop hover over glyph slot to get details of the glyph
    Hover over the glyph slot to get details of the glyph in Photoshop

  5. Double click a glyph to replace the selected glyph on the type layer.

    Double click a glyph to replace the selected glyph on the type layer in Photoshop
    Double click a glyph to replace the selected glyph on the type layer in Photoshop

Choose a mojikumi set

Mojikumi specifies Japanese text composition for spacing of Japanese characters, roman characters, punctuation, special characters, line start, line end, and numbers. Photoshop includes several predefined mojikumi sets based on the Japanese Industrial Standard (JIS) X 4051‑1995.

  1. In the Paragraph panel, choose an option from the Mojikumi pop‑up menu. 

    With the Photoshop 23.0 (October 2021) release, Mojikumi pop-up menu can also be accessed from the Type Layer Properties panel

    None

    Turns off the use of mojikumi.

    Mojikumi Set 1

    Uses half‑width spacing for punctuation.

    Mojikumi Set 2

    Uses full‑width spacing for most characters except the last character in the line.

    Photoshop Mojikumi Sets 1 and 2
    Mojikumi Set 1, and Mojikumi Set 2

    Mojikumi Set 3

    Uses full‑width spacing for most characters and the last character in the line.

    Mojikumi Set 4

    Uses full‑width spacing for all characters.

    Photoshop Mojikumi Sets 3 and 4
    Mojikumi Set 3, and Mojikumi Set 4

Set kinsoku shori options

Kinsoku shori specifies line breaks for Japanese text. Characters that cannot begin a line or end a line are known as kinsoku characters. Photoshop includes weak and maximum kinsoku sets based on the Japanese Industrial Standard (JIS) X 4051‑1995. Weak kinsoku sets omit long vowel symbols and small hiragana characters.

Disable or enable kinsoku shori for a paragraph

  1. In the Paragraph panel, choose an option from the Kinsoku pop‑up menu. 

    With the Photoshop 23.0 (October 2021) release, the Kinsoku pop-up menu can also be accessed from the Type Layer Properties panel.

    None

    Turns off the use of kinsoku shori.

    JIS Weak or JIS Maximum

    Prevents the following characters from beginning or ending a line:

    JIS Weak Set

    Characters that can’t begin a line

     

    Characters that can’t end a line

     

    JIS Maximum Set

    Characters that can’t begin a line

     

    Characters that can’t end a line

     

Specify a kinsoku line-breaking option

Kinsoku shori or mojikumi must be selected to use the following line-breaking options.

  1. From the Paragraph panel flyout menu, choose Kinsoku Shori Type and then choose one of the following methods:

    Push In First

    Moves characters up to the previous line to prevent prohibited characters from ending or beginning a line.

    Push Out First

    Moves characters down to the next line to prevent prohibited characters from ending or beginning a line.

    Push Out Only

    Always moves characters down to the next line to prevent prohibited characters from ending or beginning a line. A push-in is not attempted.

    A check mark indicates which method is selected.

Specify a burasagari option

Burasagari lets single‑byte periods, double‑byte periods, single‑byte commas, and double‑byte commas fall outside the paragraph bounding box.

  1. In the Paragraph panel, choose Burasagari from the panel menu.

    With the Photoshop 23.0 (October 2021) release, the Burasagari option can also be set using a pop-up menu in the Type Layer Properties panel.

  2. Choose an option from the submenu:

    None

    Turns off hanging punctuation.

    Regular

    Turns on hanging punctuation without forcing ragged lines to the bounding box edge.

    Force

    Forces punctuation outside the bounding box by spreading lines that end within the bounding box and end with one of the hanging characters.

    Note:

    The Burasagari options are not available when Kinsoku Shori is set to None.

Other Asian OpenType features

Other Asian OpenType features that the font supports are included in the pop-up menu available below the font menu in the Glyphs panel. Note that additional OpenType options are available depending on the font.

Additional Asian OpenType options available in Photoshop
Additional Asian OpenType options available in Photoshop

For more information, see Glyphs panel.

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