P: Text rendering using browser rendering engine

Ok, that's something I can act on -- by trying to make a way to make Photoshop's text look closer to various browser renderings.

And yeah, rendering for a browser is not the same as what we need for rendering to a layer (and I spent a lot of time trying to make it work).

Bingo. Thanks, David.

Last year, John Nack posted his idea for HTML layers in Photoshop: http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2010/06/...

The problem is just that the anti-aliasing options don't really come close to any of the browsers. We have customers who get frustrated when the sites we make don't look like the mockups they approve, and it's hard for them to understand that Photoshop doesn't render text the same way browsers do. It also makes it difficult at times to make typographical choices, since I'll have text look great in PS, but then terrible in most browsers, even with font smoothing.

If text rendering was just close to Webkit, it would cover many of the browsers out there. Since AIR uses Webkit for its HTML rendering, and the same is used for custom panels in Photoshop, I thought perhaps it could be integrated into a text layer within the editing window. Apparently that is not the case.

Well, you've specified several more things that can't happen (for a variety of reasons).

If you don't define what problem you're trying to solve, then we probably can't help you.

I'm not suggesting replicating the look of each browser, since many browsers use proprietary engines or tap into the font smoothing of the OS. I just haven't been able to get good results using the anti-aliasing modes available, and I thought maybe it would be possible to create something like a "web layer" that actually shows the text using a browser rendering engine, or even the engine used by the panels to display web content.

The advantage of being able to display web content in a PS layer would actually go far beyond being able to see how text would render. Maybe it's not possible. I just thought I'd suggest it.

We can hardly use the (MANY) browser rendering engine(s), nor match them bug for bug.

Do you just want text in Photoshop to look more like browser rendered text?