Raster, Vector and Type

While typing up documents and blogs in Microsoft Word, the software is using typefaces, or fonts, to determine the style of the text or type.   The title could be set up to be 24 points and the text of the project at 12 points, and the title would be as crisp and high quality looking as the other text.   This is all possible because type and fonts are vector-based graphics.

Typefaces in a Word Document

A good strategy for manipulating type as a vector shape in Adobe Photoshop in the same way you would be able to in Adobe Illustrator is by converting the type into a shape.   In order to accomplish this, all you have to do is open a new document in Photoshop, then type some text.   Now, right click the type layer on your layers window and select the “Convert to Shape” option.   After this step, your text has become a Photoshop shape and you can scale it up or down without loosing quality because now it is a vector object.

Convert Text to Shape In Photoshop

Because Photoshop’s limited text and type editing tools, I would advise you to create the raster graphics in Photoshop, then place in InDesign as a background and add the text directly in InDesign.   However, it is possible to layout both raster images, vector objects and text copy in Photoshop and then bring into InDesign while vector objects remain crisp and scalable, including text.   This can be achieved by saving the original Photoshop file as a Photoshop PDF or Photoshop EPS file.   Then this file should be placed in InDesign.

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