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CedricCicada
Known Participant
May 9, 2020
Answered

Why is my action creating my text layer much bigger than it should?

  • May 9, 2020
  • 1 reply
  • 1897 views

I have a problem that's been driving me up a wall for weeks. I created an action that will create a frame around my photograph and put a title, copyright notice and caption on the frame. The action will work correctly for a while, but then the text starts appearing in the wrong location.

 

The action expands the canvas, and then creates the text layer. The size of the layer is adjusted to match the size of the text. I then use Ctrl-A to select all, and with the new text layer selected, use Align Layer to Selection to align the text layer to the bottom and left edges of the selection. I then move the selection to its desired final location.

 

As you can see from the first attached screenshot, the title layer is being created much larger than the text needs. When I expanded the Make Text Layer step in my action, I see that it is supposed to be created 38.989 pixels high and 430.5 pixels wide. Instead, it is 134.98 pixels high and 1435.04 pixels wide. I note that the width is almost exactly triple the desired with, and the height is a little more than triple the desired height.

 

The other three images are screenshots of the details of the Make Text Layer step, in case there's anything in them that would help you help me.

 

If there's a step I can insert into my action to shrink a text layer to the size of the text, that would solve my problem. Does such a thing exist?

 

Thanks very much for your help. This is driving me batty.

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer Chuck Uebele

Do your files have the same resolution? Text layers normally use points for measurement, so while it's normally best just to use pixels, you image can have the same pixel dimension, but if the res is different,  so will the text be different.

1 reply

Chuck Uebele
Community Expert
Chuck UebeleCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
Community Expert
May 9, 2020

Do your files have the same resolution? Text layers normally use points for measurement, so while it's normally best just to use pixels, you image can have the same pixel dimension, but if the res is different,  so will the text be different.

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CedricCicadaAuthor
Known Participant
May 9, 2020

Thanks very much for your reply.  No, I got burned by that before.  I have Photoshop set to using pixels by default for text sizes.  

 

I just found something interesting, though.  I recorded an additional step after creating the Title layer.  I resized the layer back to what it should have been in the first place, and then I looked at the details of the step I created.  I found that the height of the resized block was a bit over 11.  That's roughly three times smaller than the original number, and the layer size before I resized it was three times larger than it should have been.  I do not know what units are used for those bounds dimensions.  I would like to force them to be in pixels.  If I can't do that, I need to change the resolution of my photograph.

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