Text Appearing as 1-Pixel-Sized Boxes in CS2

AB
Posted By
Alex Buirch
Mar 25, 2009
Views
573
Replies
4
Status
Closed
Greetings,

I’m having a problem with text inside Photoshop CS2. I’ve never had this problem before so I’m not sure what’s causing it or how to fix it– obviously.

I first noticed this problem when I was doing some work in Photoshop earlier today. I was working on a 1024 x 1024 image and noticed that when I tried to add text that I couldn’t see it at all. It wasn’t hidden behind any layers as the text layer was at the top, the opacity was set to 100%, the layer wasn’t hidden, so it should have been visible… but it wasn’t. I tried increasing the font size up to the max but again I couldn’t see it.

Wondering what the heck was going on I created a new image file at 190 x 190 pixels and tried to add in text. This time something appeared and I realized why I couldn’t see the text on the previous piece… because the text, for some reason, is appearing as tiny 1 pixel by 1 pixel sized boxes (and the font size is set to 72). If I lower the font size to anything below 72, than the boxes simply disappear. It doesn’t matter if it’s custom font or the standard font, it all does the same thing.

I was doing some work yesterday in Photoshop so I’m not sure if I accidentally hit some option that’s causing this and I didn’t realize it; though the text was working yesterday…
I’ve been trying to trace back through the option panels to see if there’s anything that might cause this to happen but I haven’t found anything yet.

Does anyone happen to know what’s going on here and how I can fix this? Any help would be much appreciated. Thank you for your time.
Related Tags
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JR
John_R_Nielsen
Mar 25, 2009
See if the resolution of the image is way low, like maybe 1 ppi. If so, change it to something more normal, like 72, 100, or 300.

you can also set the type size as pixels, rather that points, whitch is good if you’re outputting to screen, rather than print.

If these don’t work, there’s always the "Trash Yer Prefs" route.
AB
Alex Buirch
Mar 26, 2009
Well, I went into Image > Image Size and it does look like the resolution is set to 1 (I don’t remember ever changing it, but who knows). But if I try to set the resolution to 72, the width and height jump up to 73,728 pixels… which, when I tried to have it increase to that size, made Photoshop and my computer wig out and took me an hour just to get the program to close.

I than went into Edit > Preferences > Units & Rulers and changed "Type" to pixels. Now I can see the letters again but I notice that, for some reason, I can’t increase the font size to anything over 18 pixels. If I try to select 24, 36, or any of the other sizes it just reverts back to 18.
I know that I can just stretch the text and resize it, but it’s just odd that I can’t change the font size to anything over 18…
DS
Dennis_S
Mar 26, 2009
Well, I went into Image > Image Size and it does look like the resolution is set to 1 (I don’t remember ever changing it, but who knows). But if I try to set the resolution to 72, the width and height jump up to 73,728 pixels… which, when I tried to have it increase to that size, made Photoshop and my computer wig out and took me an hour just to get the program to close.

For sure you had "Resample Image" checked. You should have had that unchecked. You don’t want to re-sample (increase or decrease the number of pixels), you just want to change the resolution-to-dimension relationship. You want to increase the resolution without re-sampling, which will cause your dimensions (in inches or centimeters) to decrease (probably by quite a bit if your resolution was set at 1 pixel (per inch?).

All this works better if you sort of think things through beforehand. If you know you are producing an 8.5"x11" sheet and you know that you will be printing it out at about 300 pixels per inch, then you create your canvas with those dimensions and resolution or, if you are using an image instead of a blank canvas you crop and Image Size the image to that dimension and resolution. Then, when you add your text, the font size in points will be roughly what you would expect from a word processing application. 10-12 pt text will come out similar to a normal "typewritten" text document, for example.
AB
Alex Buirch
Mar 31, 2009
Sorry for not replying in so long… My computer’s registry got corrupted and I had to take it in for repairs.

Anyway… I’ll give that a try. Thank you for the information.

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