Formatting Characters - Adobe AFTER EFFECTS CS3 PROFESSIONAL User Manual

Formatting characters

Using the Character panel
Use the Character panel to format characters. If text is selected, changes you make in the Character panel affect only
the selected text. If no text is selected, changes you make in the Character panel affect the selected text layers and the
text layer's selected Source Text keyframes, if any exist. If no text is selected and no text layers are selected, the
changes you make in the Character panel become the new defaults for the next text entry.
• To display the Character panel, choose Window > Character; or, with a type tool selected, click the panel
button in the Tools panel.
To open the Character and Paragraph panels automatically when a type tool is active, select Auto-Open Panels in
the Tools panel.
• To reset Character panel values to the default values, choose Reset Character from the Character panel menu.
Work with fonts
A font is a complete set of characters—letters, numbers, and symbols—that share a common weight, width, and style.
In addition to the fonts installed on your system, After Effects uses font files in this local folder:
Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Fonts
Windows
Library/Application Support/Adobe/Fonts
Mac OS X
If you install a Type 1, TrueType, OpenType®, or CID font into the local Fonts folder, the font appears in Adobe appli-
cations only.
If the formatting for a character specifies a font that is unavailable on your computer system, another font will be
substituted, and the missing font name will appear in brackets. This sometimes occurs when you open a project on
Mac OS that was created on Windows, because the set of default fonts differs between the two operating systems.
When you select a font, you can select the font family and its font style independently. The font family is a collection
of fonts sharing an overall typeface design; for example, Times. A font style is a variant version of an individual font
in the font family; for example, regular, bold, or italic. The range of available font styles varies with each font. If a font
doesn't include the style you want, you can apply faux styles—simulated versions of bold, italic, superscript,
subscript, all caps, and small caps styles. If more than one copy of a font is installed on your computer, an abbrevi-
ation follows the font name: (T1) for Type 1 fonts, (TT) for TrueType fonts, or (OT) for OpenType fonts.
The font size determines how large the type appears in the image. In After Effects, the unit of measurement for fonts
is pixels. When a text layer is at 100% scale value, the pixel values match composition pixels one-to-one. So if you
scale the text layer to 200%, the font size will appear to double; for example, a font size of 10 pixels will look like 20
pixels. Because After Effects continuously rasterizes text, the resolution remains high when you increase the scale
values.
Note: When choosing fonts and styles from the menus in the Character panel, press Enter (Windows) or Return
(Mac OS) to accept an entry, or press Esc to exit the menu without applying a change.
Choose a font family
• Click in the Font Family menu text box, and begin typing the name. Continue typing until the desired font family
name appears.
• To choose the previous or next font family in the menu, place the pointer over the Font Family menu text box and
use your mouse scroll wheel; or click in the Font Family menu text box, and press the Up Arrow or Down Arrow.
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