In this video tutorial posted by Aaron Nace from Phlearn we look at how you can use the match font tool in Adobe Photoshop and make the result look super realistic.
Please note that this is more of an image manipulation tool than a photo-related tool in Photoshop, however, if you have a need to alter an existing text in an image – this is something that you might want to learn.
Match font tool
At some point during the past decade, Adobe introduced the Match Font tool. This unassuming tool found under Type>match font is actually a very powerful feature which although isn’t perfect can be extremely helpful in some situations.
Using the match font tool is very straightforward. Select the area with the text that you want to match go to Type>match font and look at the different options you get (you can download any fonts that it finds which you do not have on the computer).
A few things to keep in mind. Although from our experience the tool is very capable it can’t recognize every font and especially if a font was created specifically (some brands do that) you are out of luck.
You also need to realize that in many cases if you are trying to add or change a text in an existing image there is still lots of work even after you found the right text which is exactly what Nace demonstrates in this video.
Get a realistic result
The match font tool can only get you the font (or close to it – if you are lucky), however, if you want to use the font in an existing image you will need to find a way to make it look like the rest of the image.
Here are some of the steps that Nace performed in the video – some might apply in other cases and you might want to consider them to better match your fonts:
- Change the size of the fonts.
- Change the type of the font (bold, italic etc.).
- Transform the text to match the angle.
- Change the spacing between the fonts.
- Chane the sharpness of the fonts (adding blur).
- Add pattern/texture (select an area with a texture in the image, create a layer from it, create a clipping mask and use the screen blend mode, and use level adjustment layer to make more areas visible and reduce any color cast if it exists by reducing the saturation).
- Bonus: you can add glare to the text by creating a new layer using the text color to paint over it and using the screen blend mode to create some glare.
You can find many more Photoshop video tutorials on LensVid’s Photoshop section (you can also find a lot more Phlearn videos on our special Phlearn subsection).