Photoshop 101: Edit Text Faster
Editing text in Photoshop can be a nuisance on the fly, but I have a quick productivity tip to make your life a little easier. There is really no need to use the Type/Text Tool to edit a text layer unless you only need to highlight part of the text, or a small part of a large body of text. If you deal with a lot of text layers in Photoshop that are, for example, a bullet point or a short sentence, or small paragraph, this is the tip for you.
To follow along, all you need to do is open any PSD you have lying around that has a bit of text in it. The reason for this tip is because you can quickly edit text without ever changing tools. Therefore you can edit a text layer, and when you’re done, you still have the same tool you had before editing, with no need to change back to the (black arrow) for example. It’s really fast and simple, here’s how:
1. Double click on the “T” icon
Double click on the “T” icon, (not the layer itself) of the text layer you want to edit in your Layers palette.
2. Bam! Your text is highlighted for editing!
Now your text will be highlighted and you can start typing to replace all of the text, OR I have another bonus tip below on what to do next.
3. Position the cursor
Once you have your text highlighted, you can hit the left arrow to place the cursor in front of the text:
or the right arrow to place the cursor behind all of your text:
Advantages:
The nice thing about this feature/tip is that you don’t have to go back and select another tool to keep working. You can simply click on a different layer and the tool you had selected before you edited your text will be reselected, or you can select any tool besides the text tool to keep your current layer selected and continue editing that same layer with a different tool. It may only save you 1-2 clicks, but over time, those clicks add up.
Related Posts:
- Illustrator 101: Escape Text Boxes without the Mouse
- Photoshop 101: Lightning Fast Layer Groups
- How to Vectorize Text with 1 click - Photoshop CS2
- OS X: Install Photoshop Brushes Faster
- Get More-Natural Adjustments with the Illustrator “Reshape” Tool
- Improve Your Illustrator Workflow with Layer Masking
Wow, that looks really useful. Thanks for the tip :)
Thats Neat! The best tricks are always the simplest :D
Maybe something you all know, but after this trick you can press command (apple) + enter for applying your changes. (Because a normal enter would break the text), same works in Illstrator and indesign I believe.
Also on the PC if you hit the keypad “enter” key it will apply changes.
Thank you for this! After typesetting a whole theatre program in Photoshop (the only program I had available to me) today, this is well and truly bookmarked for next time :)
Cool tip. I love tips like this. Little stuff like this increases my productivity ten fold…
That’s going to be damn useful once I get used to using it. Its most obvious use (and one that I’m surprised you didn’t mention) is making sure you select the right text when you’ve got many layers of text layered up or very close together. Photoshop sometimes likes to select the wrong text layer for something of a laugh I’ve found.
Great tip man, keep them coming!
Great tip! Apparently this double-clicking of the Text icon in the layers panel works in GIMP too (lucky for me, because I don’t have Photoshop). Unfortunately I don’t think there’s an enter button combination that will apply the changes, just Alt-c.
It’s funny, because at first I read the title with a grain of salt,
but this post is actually quite useful!
Thanks!
I use this a lot. Another thing I am starting to get used to is a “right-click” or Option click i think if you don’t have a mighty mouse on a Mac and then select which layer you want from teh pop-up list. It will pop up with all teh layers under your arrow at a certain time.
A great tip for those that don’t know. Thanks again.
That is fantastic. I’ve had to do a lot of print material creation in photoshop lately, and there is definitely a lot of tool swapping involved when doing that. Truly valuable info, danke.
thanx, handy tip :)
i’m typing the text in Illustrator and then copy/paste in Photoshop as a smart object.
I agree, totally useful. But it’s also one of those tricks that raise your designer/Photoshop guru level in front of the casual user. ;)
Or you can hit “T” to select the text tool and click on the text.
Any tip that saves me a click or two throughout my work flow is great. Thank you Bittbox!
thanx, handy tip :)
clever one!
great and useful tip! thanks!!!
small tips add up! thank you!!
Thank you! That is cool!
thanks
I’m very grateful for the tip, as I’m only a twice a year user and I find that PS randomly either makes a new layer or allows me to edit the text that I want - thank you for the control!
One related problem is editing text that has an effect - as this doesn’t have a T icon, instead has an image icon - is there a surefire way to edit this text - as I’ve been trying to for 10 minutes and it just keeps making a new layer every time!!!
Great tip! … It’s a shame illustrator doesn’t have that short cut.
I only just discovered your blog today, great work!
Cheers!
Thank you sooooo much, I work with so many layers in every file and have got frustrated with clicking to highlight text and gaining a new text layer…. this will save me so much time! Thanks again.
That rocks! Do you have any idea how much easier my job just became because of this awesome tip???
@jedi,
Glad you liked it :)
that’s very helpful… thank you Jay..
Thanks.. that’s very helpful