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Unified Text Engine in Photoshop

Unified Text Engine replaces legacy text engines and enables advanced typographic features for international languages and scripts across the world. Learn the how behind.

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Follow along to set your Type preferences in a few simple steps.

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Updated in Photoshop 23.0 (October 2021 release)

Unified Text Engine replaces legacy text engines and enables advanced typographic features for international languages and scripts across the world, including Arabic, Hebrew, Indic scripts, Japanese, Chinese, and Korean. 

With Unified Text Engine, all advanced typographic will be automatically available and grouped together in the Photoshop Type Layer Properties panel. This will eliminate the need to switch text engines per language.

Key enhancements include:

  • Improved text shaping using open-sourced HarfBuzz text shaping engine for Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and all non-Latin scripts
  • Improved support for bi-directional text using FriBidi
  • Consolidated Arabic and Japanese advanced typographic features are now additionally located in the Type Layer Properties panel

Create documents using international languages, scripts, and type

Create a document

To create a document using an international language:

  1. Open a document, select a Type tool, and create a Type layer.

  2. In the Character panel, set the desired language. (Language selection is needed only for hyphenation and spelling.)

    Set the language in the Character panel in Photoshop
    Set the language in the Type Layer Properties panel

    Set the language in the Character panel
    Or, set the language in the Character panel

  3. Based on the language you select, set an appropriate font. For example, if you choose the Thai language, set a Thai font, such as Adobe Thai or Noto Sans Thai.

  4. Copy and paste the text composed in your chosen language. If you have a language-specific keyboard, simply type the text.

With Unified Text Engine, there is no need to switch between layout options as the language support works seamlessly.

Type Layer Properties panel in Photoshop
Type Layer Properties panel

Sections in Type Layer Properties panel
Sections in Type Layer Properties panel

Unified Text Engine

Improvements with the introduction of Unified Text Engine

  • Text engine composer switching user interface under Photoshop > Preferences > Type has been removed. New Type layers will support all scripts and languages by default. Users can manually switch legacy text engine composer using the Paragraph panel flyout menu when opening a legacy text engine Photoshop document. 
  • Middle Eastern and East Asian advanced typographic features are always available on the Type Layer Properties panel.
  • Unlike the previous Photoshop versions, the default paragraph direction attribute right-to-left is enabled only when the UI language is set to: “English: Arabic enabled”, “English: Hebrew enabled”, or “French: North Africa”.
  • Photoshop no longer supports Type 1 fonts and Arabic Axt fonts. If a legacy Photoshop document is opened with Type 1 fonts, Photoshop will treat them as missing fonts.

Type 1 Font Support End of Life with Photoshop 23.0 Release

Photoshop 23.0 no longer supports PostScript Type 1 fonts. We have updated, modernized, and unified our text engine with the Harfbuzz script shaper to support all scripts. 

Type 1 fonts (also known as PostScript, PS1, T1, Adobe Type 1, Multiple Master, or MM) are a format within the font industry, replaced by the larger glyph sets. These fonts are not supported in most browsers and most operating systems, and Adobe, are moving forward with support and more robust technical possibilities of OpenType format fonts. 

Photoshop 23.0 and later will not recognize Type 1 fonts, even if you have them installed in your desktop operating system:

  1. Type 1 fonts will not appear in the Photoshop Fonts menu.
  2. Previously installed Type 1 fonts will no longer work in Photoshop files.
  3. Opening Photoshop files with existing Type 1 fonts will treat the Type 1 fonts as missing fonts in the document. 

If the font you need is not already available to you in the Adobe Fonts library, you can get supported Adobe-owned fonts from our partner fontspring.  

Customers who’ve purchased Type 1 fonts not owned by Adobe can contact the font foundry that published the font(s) to learn about the availability of an upgrade path to the OpenType format.

Note: Converting Type 1 fonts to the OpenType format is possible but may produce a sub-optimal result. Additionally, converting your files may be prohibited by the font foundry’s End User License Agreement. Please consult the license agreement or contact the foundry directly for more information.

Supported international scripts

Besides Latin, the Unified Text Engine composer supports the following languages and scripts:

Indic

Middle Eastern

South East Asian

CJK

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

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

  • Thai
  • Sinhalese
  • Burmese 
  • Khmer
  • Lao
  • Chinese
  • Japanese
  • Korean

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photoshop supports scripts from around the world with shaping and basic common attributes (no advanced Typographic features).

Photoshop only supports advanced typographic features for Latin, Arabic, and Japanese. For all other scripts, only shaping and common type attributes are supported. 

Note:

Text features across Adobe applications do not necessarily have feature parity as each application can rely on different text engines. Also, 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 East 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, is likely to result in the loss of some or all text copy and formatting edits. 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 before usage in other applications.
  • Text conversions may result in a loss of editability when moved from one application to another.

Pro tip: South East Asian scripts are not currently supported by all products, but need some composer switching in InDesign and Illustrator. 

(Windows) Install relevant language and font packs

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

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

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