Problems with lettering

[Dennis Emigh]

I'm working on a shirt logo and everything is going great (my first paying job!). I have one little problem though. When I type the word, no matter how big the picture is, it seems that the lettering is jagged as if I'm making a very small picture and the pixels aren't filling in. The canvas size is 1800x900 (short and wide). Any suggestions? :/

**Edit**

Here's a direct link to the true size of it. It shows a lot more.

http://i.imgur.com/CQHjo.jpg

 

[Steve]

Something like this should be done with a vector based program like Adobe Illustrator.

Photoshop is a raster based program, individual dots, pixels.
AI is vector based, points, lines, and curves.

Much smoother.
If you don't have AI try Inkscape. Draw Freely.

 

[theKeeper]

Hi Dennis...

As a side note, having a document set to a large pixel dimension doesn't mean your document is truly "high res". For that, you need to set the DPI under Image Properties to 150 or higher. 300 is most common for print work. 72/96 are used for Mac and PC screen dpi settings and can produce less than stellar print quality results.

There are a couple specific reasons text can be jagged in PS.
1) You have the anti-aliasing setting of your text set to 'None'. If this is the case try using Crisp or Bold instead.
2) The font you're using is of screen level quality. i.e. it was designed to be used/seen on a monitor, not used for print quality work. (This would be my guess in your case here Dennis)

In which case, there are only limited options for you. None of which will produce a high quality effect like a decent quality typeface would.

May i suggest you hunt around for other "graffitti" type fonts that might be better in quality? I know there are several free ones around the Web to be had.

Let us know if any of this helped Dennis. I hope it did on some level.

Take care.

Mark (aka the Keeper)...

 

[dv8_fx]

Hi Dennis. For text jobs of this sort, I use Corel Draw. One reason is text comes out crisp no matter what size you set it to. And I agree with theKeeper... the font you chose may look good in the monitor but may not come out well when printed.

Try setting your font to Bold and crisp/Smooth.

Hope it helps...