Photoshop: Small Text

Create small, pixel-like text used for different kinds of graphics.

Step 1

For this tutorial I created an empty document with a resolution of 72 pixels/inch. Get your hands on the Text tool, choose Arial as the font, make the size 2pt and set it to sharp.

Step 2

Next step will be to open the character window via Window - Character. Now you'll see plenty of nice options to use, but we will only use a few. Set the tracking to 800, enable all caps and subscript. You are now ready to type away. Feel free to experiment with the settings to get different results.

Step 3 (CS3 Edit)

I recently got my hands on the CS3 version and noticed the result of the settings I used in PS7 didn't quite give the same satisfying result. In CS3, you can use the following settings instead: set Arial as the font, set the size to 2pt and the anti-aliasing method to crisp instead of sharp. You can make an additional duplicate of the text layer to gain opacity. To finish it, set the tracking to around 900, make the leading 2pt if desired and finally enable the all caps and subscript options.