How to access Arabic and Hebrew features in Photoshop 23.0 and later

Photoshop provides several options for working with Arabic and Hebrew types. 

Photoshop 23.0 (October 2021) release now includes seamless unified typographical support for Arabic and Hebrew texts without having to select the World-Ready Layout text engine in the Preferences or from the Paragraph panel flyout menu. 

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

Prior to the Photoshop 23.0 release, to reveal Middle Eastern type options in the Photoshop interface, do the following:

1. Choose Edit > Preferences > Type (Windows) or Photoshop > Preferences > Type (macOS).
2. In the Choose Text Engine Options section, select World-Ready Layout.
3. Click OK.
4. Open a document, select a Type tool, and choose Type > Language Options > Middle Eastern Features. This ensures the Middle Eastern Feature menu item is enabled. Otherwise, the menu item may be disabled. 
   

Default fonts

When you install a Middle Eastern or North African version of Photoshop, the default typing font is set to the installation-specific language, by default. For example, if you install the English-Arabic-enabled version, the default typing font is set to Adobe Arabic.

Similarly, if you install the English-Hebrew-enabled version, the default typing font is set to Adobe Hebrew.

Text direction

To create content in Arabic and Hebrew, you can make the right-to-left (RTL) direction the default text direction. However, for documents that include left-to-right (LTR) text, you can now seamlessly switch between the two directions.

1. From the fly-out menu in the Paragraph panel, choose World-Ready Layout and then choose Middle Eastern Features. 
2. Select Right-To-Left or Left-To-Right paragraph direction from the Paragraph panel. In Photoshop 23.0 and later, text direction is also available in the Type Layer Properties panel. 
3. Character direction defaults can be set from the Character > Middle Eastern Features flyout menu. 

If you have a mix of languages in the same paragraph, you can specify the direction of text at a character level. Also, to insert dates or numbers, specify the direction of text at the character level.

From the Character panel flyout menu, choose the desired character direction.

Digit types

When working with Arabic or Hebrew text, you can select the type of digits you want to use. You can choose between Arabic, Hindi, and Farsi.

By default, in Arabic versions of Photoshop, Hindi digits are auto-selected; in Hebrew versions, Arabic digits are selected. However, you can manually change digit types if necessary:

1. Select the digits in the text.
2. In the Character panel, use the Digits dropdown list to select the desired format.

Diacritical marks

In the Arabic script, a diacritic (or a diacritical mark) is a glyph used to indicate the consonant length or short vowels. It is placed above or below the script.

For better styling of text, or improved readability of certain fonts, you can control the vertical or horizontal position of diacritical marks:

1. Select text that has diacritical marks. 
2. In the Character panel, modify the position of the diacritic marks relative to the script. Values you can change are Adjust Horizontal Diacritic Position and Adjust Vertical Diacritic Position. 

Arabic Justification

In Arabic, the text is justified by adding kashidas. Kashidas are added to Arabic characters to lengthen them. Whitespace is not modified.

Use automatic kashida insertion to justify paragraphs of Arabic text. 

1. Select the paragraph. 
2. At the lower-right of the Paragraph panel, choose an option from the Insert Kashidas pop-up menu:
   • None
   • Short
   • Medium
   • Long
   • Stylistic

Note: Kashidas are inserted only in paragraphs with fully justified margins, and this setting is not applicable for paragraphs with alignment settings. 

To apply kashidas to a group of characters:

1. Select the characters in the document. 
2. Choose Type > Language Options > Kashidas.

Ligatures (OpenType fonts)

With some OpenType fonts, you can automatically apply ligatures to character pairs in Arabic and Hebrew. Ligatures are typographic replacement characters for certain letter pairs.

1. Select text.
2. In the Character pane flyout menu, select OpenType. You can also locate the OpenType icons in the Characters panel. 

Discretionary ligatures provide more ornate options supported by some fonts.

Hyphenation

Sentences that have more words that can fit into one line of text automatically wrap into the next line. The type of text justification when wrapping occurs sometimes causes unnecessary spaces to appear in the line that is not aesthetically pleasing or linguistically correct.

Hyphenation (using a hyphen) enables you to split the word at the end of a line. This fragmentation causes the sentence to wrap into the next line in a better way.

Mixed text: The kashida insertion feature affects hyphenation in mixed text. When enabled, kashidas are inserted where applicable, and non-Arabic text is hyphenated. When the kashida feature is disabled, only non-Arabic text is hyphenated.

Note: This functionality is disabled when you choose Arabic as the Language in the Character panel.

Hebrew text: Hyphenation is allowed in Hebrew text. To enable hyphenation and customize settings, choose Hyphenation from the Paragraph panel flyout menu.

Justification alternates

A font can provide alternative shapes for certain letters, typically for stylistic or calligraphy purposes. In rare cases, justification alternates are used to justify and align paragraphs containing these shapes.

Justification alternates can be turned on at a character level, but only if a font supports this feature. At the bottom of the Character panel, select Justification Alternates. This is also available in the Middle Eastern Features section of the Type Layer Properties panel.

These Arabic fonts contain justification alternates: Adobe Arabic, Myriad Arabic, and Adobe Naskh.

These Hebrew fonts contain justification alternates: Adobe Hebrew and Myriad Hebrew.

Find and replace

Arabic and Hebrew users can perform full-text search and replace. In addition to searching and replacing simple text, you can also search and replace text with specific characteristics. These characteristics can include diacritical marks, kashidas, special characters, like Alef, digits in different languages, like digits in Hindi, and more.

To perform text find-and-replace, choose Edit > Find And Replace.

Glyphs

Arabic and Hebrew users can apply glyphs from the default character set. However, to browse, select, and apply a glyph from the default character set or a different language set, use the Glyphs panel (Window > Glyphs).

Browse, select, and insert glyphs in your text.