Adding jitter to text in Photoshop

Using Photoshop CC.
I'm making mugshot cards for a group; we're doing promo photos in the style of the "Orange is the New Black" mugshots.
I've done them before for myself and have my saved layered PSDs that I can build from.

I want to make the individual letters in the lines of text uneven, in horizontal/vertical alignment as well as rotation. In the past, I've rasterized the text layer, then marquee-selected each individual letter and adjusted it. This is a tedious and time-consuming process. I'm hoping to automate it somehow, since I have eight more cards to make before Monday.

The Photoshop brush tool has "Jitter" where you can adjust the size, rotation, etc of each "stamp" that the brush makes. This sort of thing would be ideal for what I need - if it worked for text.

As an alternative, I could put each letter on its own layer, and make an action that adjusts each layer. But the names on the cards are of different lengths - different number of letters, different number of layers,so I think the action would fail. Plus, putting each letter on its own layer is tedious in itself.

Any suggestions?


This is one of the cards I've made in the past. It's just printed on paper and glued to a piece of foamcore.
[Side note, it's a photo of me, I don't own copyright but I have license from Tony to use it for personal and self-promotion.]

https://scontent-atl3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos​-xap1/t31.0-8/s960x960/706231_4988​32240185892_344275638_​o.jpg

Could you find or create 36 brushes for the letters/numbers?

Interesting links:
http://graphicdesign.s​tackexchange.com …k-apart-text-in-photoshop
https://forums.adobe.c​om/thread/782215?tstar​t=0

With just a bit more programming, I am sure you can tell each separate letter layer to reposition itself some random # pixels up or down.

Interesting. That kind of scripting is beyond my current skill level, but I suppose this is a good reason to start learning a new trick.

Might also try looking for "uneven fonts" maybe?

Take a look at the Character window. It'll do what you want, but might be more time consuming than you'd want. Once you have the type you want you could select whichever character and apply the change.

What if you did type on a path?

I tried the path too, but it also angles the letters to match the slope at any given point. Is there a way to make the path always be horizontal where the letters go? You also have to draw the line before hand, and that could be tedious redrawing it until it looks good.

In Illustrator I made a straight line and then added control points along the line at somewhat regular intervals. Then I used the point selection tool (the white arrow) and shifted the points sort of randomly to add some variation to the line. Then use the Type Along A Path tool. Because the line and its points are editable, you can go back and select the points to tweak the look you're after. You do not need to displace the control points all that much to get an irregular look - the beginning of "Penitentiary" in the below example is probably too much displacement, causing the letters to rotate a little too much. Easy enough to correct.

If you need a different look for each person, some quick tweaks to the control points here and there will probably be all you need.

You can always adjust spacing, leading, kerning, etc. as usual with the Character palette.

When you have it the way you want, you can print it, or export it to PS, etc.

kirk

I see some discussions on assigning staircase as a setting, does that exist somewhere? If so, that might then not rotate the letters, but would still leave them staggered...

I need to research that method more, it looks useful for several different things. I played a little earlier but couldn't quite get a good look.

Same thing in PS, using some layer effects to add a bevel to the characters, etc. The characters are live text, so easy to duplicate and type a new name. You can have each person on their own layer and use layer comps to export all 8 jobs to separate files (if you need that) when you are done the work.

kirk

Hmm.
I don't know Illustrator much at all, but I think can type along a path in Photoshop. That might work - and since the all the performers' names are different lengths, the shape and location of the irregularity will change.

Then, I can easily adjust the individual letter kerning here and there; that's not difficult at all (cmd+arrows).


[edit]
Update, kirk replied again while I was typing this. I think this solution will work really well.

I think I already have some very subtle bevel/shadow effects on the font, maybe I need to boost them so they show up better in photos of the print.


Thanks!

nathancarter wrote in post #17931913
Hmm.
I don't know Illustrator much at all, but I think you can type along a path in Photoshop. That might work - and since the all the performers' names are different lengths, the shape and location of the irregularity will change.

Then, I can easily adjust the individual letter kerning here and there; that's not difficult at all (cmd+arrows).

I think I already have some very subtle bevel effects on it.

Yes - the bevel one was done along a path in PS. Same general approach as the Illustrator method. Make a path, add a bunch of control points, displace them, type text along the path.

kirk

If you really wanted to get crazy, you could use data-driven graphics to do all of the text replacement automatically for each of your eight placards. Just define the line of text that holds the person's name as a Variable and set up a spreadsheet with the variable name as a column header and each person's name as a row in that column.

Let Photoshop churn through the list and automatically generate all eight documents.

I wrote up a tutorial about using data driven graphics a while ago. See:

https://photography-on-the.net …php?p=8174357#p​ost8174357

kirk

I think I have the general gist of this, and with a bit more work, I should be able to use this myself. One way to create a bevel is to just replicate your white text, change the color to a gray, move the layer down, and then just offset it a little bit. You can replicate that gray level a couple more times and move them around to create the edges. Very quick and easy. My poor attempt at this, but it should work given enough experience.

kirkt wrote in post #17931930
If you really wanted to get crazy, you could use data-driven graphics to do all of the text replacement automatically for each of your eight placards. Just define the line of text that holds the person's name as a Variable and set up a spreadsheet with the variable name as a column header and each person's name as a row in that column.

Let Photoshop churn through the list and automatically generate all eight documents.

I wrote up a tutorial about using data driven graphics a while ago. See:

https://photography-on-the.net …php?p=8174357#p​ost8174357

kirk

That is pretty slick, so you would create text "single character" placeholders staggered as you would like them, then in a spreadsheet, give the text placeholders the actual characters for the names, etc? Neat!