Help - Blurry Fonts?

[PharmDAmy]

I am working on my son's birthday invitations tonight and have a question that I hope someone can help me with. I normally type everything in Microsoft Word and print from there. However, I am using an outline font and am using Photoshop Elements to color it in. I found instructions online that told me how to do this. My problem is that the font is appearing blurry on my screen and when I print it out. At a large font size, it appears as it normally should. It's normal in MS Word at any font size. What am I doing wrong? Can anyone help me fix what I'm doing or is it just something that is inevitable. The font is a True Type Font that I downloaded off the Internet. When I choose to print, it does tell me that the image will print at less than 220 ppi at the selected size.

Any help would be appreciated. I am still learning my way around all the things Photoshop Elements will do.

Thanks!

[TheresaND]

This is very odd and I'm not sure why a font would do this. Fonts inherintely size up and down without issue, usually.

What is the font you're using and what size is it? Is it also blurry at a smaller size?

[MamaK321]

do they Theresa? I was thinking that the font must have been designed on a small scale and when enlarged and printed, was pixelated. I've had that happen before where it looks fine on the screen but prints skewed.

[AmyTeets]

Is this before or after it's been rastersized?

[AnnOminous]

I'm not really understanding what is going on.

Are you doing the letters with the font first in Word, then printing them out and scanning them into PSE?

Or are you doing some kind of cut&paste to move the letters from Word to PSE?

[Kim2002]

There are some fonts that just look awful at larger sizes. I have tried using some fonts for creating alphas and they just look awful at 150 pts, but will look great at 48. Sometimes, though, all the fonts get out of whack in Photoshop. When that happens, I use the RESET CHARACTER option within the character palette. I'm not sure if that function is available in PS Elements, though.
Have you tried other fonts to see if it is happening to all of them? If it is happening to them all, then I would close everything out and reboot your computer. If it is just happening to the one font, then I would guess it is a problem with that font and I would pick a different font to use.

[PharmDAmy]

Actually, it is more blurry at a smaller size. It is a font called "Mickey." I need to look back and see where I downloaded it from (Right now, I am not on the computer I have it stored on and do not remember offhand). The smallest size I was attempting to use was 18. I have tried both typing directly into PSE at that font size and copying/pasting from the Word document. It is still blurry both ways. It is blurry before simplifying the layer and is still blurry after I do that step.

I have ended up printing it in Word and coloring it in with colored pencils, which I actually love the look of on these invites. It has just been a pain in the rear to color in so many. If my little guy would have decided on a theme sooner, I definately would have had more time to get this done in. Luckily, they are mostly for family and friends that already know the date and time of the party so it isn't a big deal to get the invites to them so late.

I did find something online after posting this that mentioned pixel fonts and how them being aliased or anti-aliased makes a difference on whether their edge is smooth or jagged. I tried using the anti-alias feature but it is still jagged that way, although less so than when you turn it off.

This is all pretty foreign to me. I have so much to learn. Thank you all for taking the time to respond to my post. Even though I gave up and colored it in by hand this time, I am still interested in figuring out a way around this in case there is a next time.

[PharmDAmy]

There are some fonts that just look awful at larger sizes. I have tried using some fonts for creating alphas and they just look awful at 150 pts, but will look great at 48. Sometimes, though, all the fonts get out of whack in Photoshop. When that happens, I use the RESET CHARACTER option within the character palette. I'm not sure if that function is available in PS Elements, though.
Have you tried other fonts to see if it is happening to all of them? If it is happening to them all, then I would close everything out and reboot your computer. If it is just happening to the one font, then I would guess it is a problem with that font and I would pick a different font to use.

This was the only font I tried. When I am able to get on the computer that has my PSE program later this evening, I will try and see what happens with other fonts and also the original one I was using since I have rebooted this computer several times since then.

[PharmDAmy]

Is this before or after it's been rastersized?

I am showing my inexperience with Photoshop, but what is rastersized? Maybe that's the problem since I don't know what that is. lol

[lizziej]

I've been using PSE for almost 2 years now, and I still don't know what "rastersized" means! LOL

I've never had the blurry font problem so I'm not sure what could be causing that.

[bamablue]

 Rasterized defined... in my own words

When you type in text in a digi program, it is usually vector data, which uses mathmatical calculations to represent image data meaning that most lines are exceptionally clean even when scaled.  Raster data is based on pixels and can lose clarity when scaled.

Ironically, I always change my vector graphics to raster before I resize for posting on the internet.  I find that the clarity of the text, in particular, is clearer that way...although I'm not sure why that is!