Photoshop recently released a new beta feature called dynamic text, which automatically adjusts your text formatting and size in real time. Text-handling in Photoshop has always been tedious and required careful adjustments, but it just became significantly easier.
Coming to you from Aaron Nace with Phlearn, this practical video demonstrates exactly how dynamic text simplifies the workflow for anyone who uses Photoshop regularly. Traditionally, when you create a text box in Photoshop and adjust its dimensions, your text either spills over or gets clipped. Now, with dynamic text, the size and formatting of your text automatically adapt as you resize the text box, preventing any words from disappearing. Nace shows how intuitive it is to switch from traditional text formatting to dynamic text with just a single click. Even better, he demonstrates how easily you can move, resize, and reshape the text box without losing any text or needing manual adjustments.
What makes this feature especially powerful is its flexibility. Nace explains how you can control the exact layout of your text by adjusting the box dimensions—wider boxes produce shorter, wider fonts, while narrow boxes yield taller, thinner fonts. He also showcases the practicality of dynamic text with layer masks, allowing text placement behind subjects or objects effortlessly. This capability not only streamlines creative possibilities but eliminates the frustrating back-and-forth usually required to finalize text placement. If you've struggled in the past with fine-tuning your typography to fit specific layouts, dynamic text addresses these challenges directly, providing an efficient workflow solution without sacrificing creative freedom.
The video further explores advanced techniques, such as selectively formatting individual words and maintaining those style changes even as the overall layout adjusts. Nace also demonstrates using Photoshop’s character menu alongside dynamic text, allowing you to mix different fonts and styles within the same dynamic box seamlessly. An added bonus includes the ease of adding drop shadows using colors sampled directly from your image for cohesive design integration. These additional tools significantly enhance your text’s visual impact, making your designs stand out without tedious manual adjustments. There’s even a quick tip about resizing your entire dynamic text box uniformly using transform controls, ensuring design consistency throughout your projects. Beyond these basic and intermediate steps, Nace introduces methods to isolate certain words onto their own lines within a dynamic box, giving you precision control over the text layout and design clarity. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Nace.
