Photoshop Friday! Justified text in Photoshop Elements!

I’ve been telling everyone for a long time that you can’t do justified text in Photoshop Elements (i.e. straight margins on both sides). After all, there’s no button for it. So I assumed (and I’ve read in dozens of other places) that left, center, and right justification were all we had.

I learned differently just a week or so ago, and I’m willing to wager I’m not the only one who didn’t know this. ;) So here it is in a Photoshop Friday! Fully justified text in Photoshop Elements! I love learning new stuff!

Of course, you full version users have had this all along. Simply go to Window > Paragraph, target your paragraph, and click the appropriate button. :)

Justified Text in PSE (4 and 5)

1. Open a new blank document.

2. Select your Horizontal Type tool.

3. Draw a text box (only available in PSE 4 and 5).

4. Type your text (I used the Lorem Ipsum generator for my “greeked” text) 

5. When you’re finished, make sure that your Type tool is  selected, and that you’ve got a cursor blinking somewhere inside of your text box. You’ll notice that I’ve got the Left Align button clicked in the Options Bar at the top of my screen, so my text is left aligned.

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6. Here’s the important part: Hit Ctrl-Shift-j. This is the hotkey command for full justification, and it works in PSE, even if there’s no button for it.

Your text box turns fully justified. Neat! You’ll also notice that none of the alignment buttons are active in the Options bar anymore.

Click for LargerThis is very cool if you want to make column text like a newspaper, or if you want to do some manual shaping using tabs and spaces.

Here’s another shot with the text deselected, so you can see it:

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NOTE:  In my preliminary use of this, it actually appears that all your text boxes will default to full justification after you’ve set this, unless you click one of the alignment buttons in the Options Bar at the top of the screen.

I hope you have a super, Phabulous Photoshop Phriday! :D :D 

Comments

[meems]

omg, what an AWESOME tip! I can't wait to try it

[SharonC]

Awesome tip! Thanks so much. I wonder what other hidden tricks there are?

[LivE]

Okay, with this PSF, it IS another one of those PHABULOUS FRIDAYS!!! Thanks for discovering this and sharing it with us, Jess!!! :D

[Carol]

Awesome. You don't know how many times I have wanted to fully justify my text!

[Lori G]

This is awesome!! Thanks so much... I had given up on trying to figure this out!

[Angi Smith]

Jessica,
I have recently started receiving "the dreaded red X's" in your posts and in a couple of other blogs, too. Do you know what causes this?

[KirstyB]

JESSICA!! You are my new best friend!! I have been trying to figure out how to do this forever and had resigned myself to the fact that it just wasn't gonna happen!! THANK YOU!! :)

[Tori]

Ditto to all of the above! Thanks for sharing...YOU are phabulous on this Friday!

[Monique]

Thanks Jessica, tried it and it works!

[Demetria]

Cool Trick...thanks so much for sharing!!!!

[Janet O]

Oh SNAP. Doesn't work in plain ol' PS. DANGIT!

[Melanie]

WHAT?!?!? I went and bought PSCS2 because PSE wouldn't fully justify!!!
Just kidding ... sort of ...
Very neat trick - and I am going to spread the word!
Thanks so much!

[Erica]

THIS makes me happy! Thank you!

[grambie]

I had no idea and definitely thank you for this lovely tid-bit. Love your Fridayz Newsletters along with so many others.

[Tina N]

Thanks Jessica, another great tip and you are so generous to share! Can't wait to put this to use on a LO for our class U&R August.

[Brigid]

Thanks so much, Jessica! Now if I could only figure out how to separate text into 2 or 3 columns and have it flow automatically when I've filled up one column... Any ideas there, anyone?

[Sheila Doherty]

Fab tip! I didn't think you could fully justify in PSE either. Thanks for passing that on!!

[Amanda]

Thank you so much for this tip! I beats having to use a text path!

[Nicole]

This is one of the best tips I've seen in a long time. Phabulous!

[Mrs S]

*lol* I was trying to justify text today in CS2 and couldn't figure it out... so thanks for letting me know :)

[Steph]

Woohoo!!!!!! All of us clean-lined anal retentive scrappy types are bowing down to you! :D

[Fiona]

You're wonderful! I wanted to do this when I first started scrapping for a layout with a newspaper column on it.

Just to let you know this also works in PS7.

Thanks again. :)

[Barb]

This is why you are the digi scrap goddess! Thank you so much. Very cool!
Barb

[Melanie]

no its me being really DIM..but how do I draw a text box to start with? I've always just typed text right onto where ever...
and I've been dying to justify text in so many layouts recently. now if i could just get the last bit....

[Sharon]

Wow - thanks Jessica for the great tip. No more trying get things lined up manually!

[Noel]

Wow!!! There have been a bunch of times I've wanted to use this feature!!! Thanks for uncovering their hidden secret! :D

[Lorraine]

Thank you so much for this fabulous tip! There have been so many times I could have used this. Your site rocks!!!!

[Debra]

Can I just say....WOOHOO!!!! I'm off to try it now...Thank you SO much!!! You're dabomb!!!

[Lee]

Hi -
I'm with Melanie #2. I have PSE 4.0 for a Mac and am unfamiliar with a "Text Block". The only time I see a bounding box around text is if my layer is active and I am using the Move Tool to shift it around the page. I tried searching in PSE help, but no luck.

Any additional information you could provide would be great!
Many thanks for ALL your great tips and your extremly clear teaching style!
;o)
- Lee

[Heather]

Dude - I'm so glad you told us about this. This has been a sore spot with me and PSE. Thanks Jessica!