Kerning on Photoshop broken

[Jamie5EAB]

Here is my issue. I am experiencing weird kerning on a load of my text in photoshop

What I have tried so far

- Turning my computer on and off again 

- Uninstalling Ps and installing again 

- Uninstalling Ps, turning off comp, restarting, installing again 

- Resetting the type tool altogether 

- Installing an older version of photoshop, back when it used to work

- Rebuilding the file in a totally new file

I am at a loss and need this for work

The words in question:

Here are my type settings: 

When I change the kerning nothing happens as well...

[jane-e]

@Jamie5EAB 

Kerning is the space between two letters; tracking is the space between a range of letters. Currently your kerning shows zero and your tracking shows -20.

• To change the tracking, select the text first. It's a character setting.
• To change kerning, click in between each pair of letters.
  When text is selected, the kerning control will give you a choice of optical or metrics, which will automatically apply different kerning unless manual kerning has been applied. Yours says 0, meaning text is not selected.

Select your text and show screen shot of your selected text with the Character panel (Window menu).

https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/line-character-spacing.html

~ Jane

[Jamie5EAB]

This still doesn't help 

[Jamie5EAB]

I have always used tracking at -35 

Apologies, I said kerning when in actual fact I meant tracking. You can see the confusion is easy as tracking usually affects kerning of the whole word, no? A small technicality. The other creatives in my team have opened up the file and still have the same issues?

I even created a new file and still experience these issues? 

 

[Jamie5EAB]

I manged to finally fix this, by deleting Photoshop and not saving any of my presets or plugins and then installing it again

[Test Screen Name]

I'm glad you fixed it, but the previous screen shot looks correct for the tracking you used. The font designer made the font to be "optically correct" at 0 tracking, and this correctness is a careful balance of optical illusions, since curves together give a different illusion than straight edges together. By tracking tightly you have virtually removed the space between letters, but the illusion is drastically different between straight edges together and curved edges together; you still have the illusion of space between curved letters even if they overlap, while straight letters merge to one. Every font can tolerate some tracking, but finding the reasonable limit needs an experiment. (In fact it looks as if you did exactly that experiment, and found it too high). 

[jane-e]

@Jamie5EAB 

I had thought your issue was that the letters were too close, making the text hard to read, but now you say you are intentionally choosing -35 for the extremely tight tracking.

Can I ask what the issue was that you were trying to solve?

Jane

[Jamie5EAB]

Ahh, maybe I did not explain so well. I wanted the tracking at -35 to tighten up the text for this piece of work. The issue I was having was usually there is equidistant spacing between letters. But, only very recently the spacing had become totally different between letters as seen above. Weirdly it is fixed after my deleting all Ps data and then reinstalling. 

[jane-e]

@Jamie5EAB 

"But, only very recently the spacing had become totally different between letters as seen above."

That was most likely an issue with kerning. To see the kerning between the letters you need to click an insertion point between them. There is automatic kerning (set by selecting the text and choosing metrics or optical) or manual kerning. Kerning can be adjusting for letter pairs separately from Tracking.

Gutenberg was worried about certain letter pairs, such as AV, AW, Y. , and others. If you look at these pairs even here in this forum, you can see kerning has properly been applied and the second letter is overlapping the space of the first. With kerning of zero, the letters would look too far apart.

The best source for learning typography and proper letter spacing is @nigelfrench .

• InDesign Type, 4th edition
  https://www.amazon.com/InDesign-Type-Professional-Typography-Adobe-dp-0134846710/dp/0134846710/ref=m...
• Multiple courses on LinkedIn Learning (paid subscription, but free trial)
• Popular speaker at Adobe MAX, Creative Pro and other major conferences
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhODtnAcYZA

I hope this helps in case it happens again.

Jane

[Jamie5EAB]

 I just wanted a fix for my tracking issue. It was more that the tracking wasn't working properly and showing different spacing to what it usually does. Let's just forget I said kerning and used that word wrong. 

Thanks for the above. I'll brush up on my definitions so I can ask better more accurate questions on the forum in the future. 

[Astonished_Unicorn5C56]

Yeah I'm getting this same issue. With defaults selected, all the letters are tracked incorrectly. I thought it was a specific font, but nope. They're all messed up. Was hoping I didn't have to delete re-install though. OH. Just realized, I updated my version yesterday. So that could def be the issue.

[SKY Art]

Over 20 year pro user of Photoshop. Just had the same issue. Tracking mechanism not working on Proxima Nova Black, Adobe font. Can't kern. All letters not following kerning rules. Super wide and then smash to no spacing with minimal adjustment. It's on the program end. Please watch before this becomes a bigger issue on new program versions. I will reinstall as recommended above. 

[jane-e]

@SKY Art 

Please show a screenshot with your text cursor inbetween two letters that are not kerned properly and include the Character panel (Window menu. Repeat for each letter pair that does not have proper kerning.

Have you also set tracking? Select the text and show us what the Character panel says for tracking. When the text is selected, there will also be a word in the kerning box instead of a number. What is that word?

We also need to see your paragraph panel.

Jane

[Christopher25126190kul1]

I have the same problem. I can't ajust the space between the characters. It always worked like a charm and in illustrator it works well. Don't know how to get rid of this error.

[Christopher25126190kul1]

[ChrisLeicester]

You can adjust kerning between characters by positioning the cursor there, pressing Alt and using the arrow key. However, I have a really weird bug - I have the word "Essential", and the "t" and the "i" are squashed together. I can't fix that - I can position the cursor between the "t" and "i", but when I try to fix the Kerning, it moves the "a" instead. If I move the cursor before the t, it moves the t and i together.

Yet again, I've had to rely on Powerpoint to add text to Photoshop images.