Support Arabic Typing in CS6

[vodafoneuser]

Hello everyone,

During the Beta versions of Photoshop, I have moticed there was an extra support for typing, which was arabic or midlle eastern typing from the language options

but I see in the finall releas.. this option has been unebabled..

so now I cannot type in arabic ?!

Any help?!

Regards

[David Mohr]

Actually, Jellyfish, I do not think you're a troll at all.  I just didn't understand any manifestations of your problem that would impact other users.  I get it now; it's an issue with existing documents or new documents which aren't "planned" to be internationalized as a result of our design.

As a result, I have both logged a bug and initiated an internal discussion to get this fixed.  We pulled the feature because it was buggy and could trigger crashes.  It didn't seem like it was worth the effort to fix.  This information gives me a good case to change that.  Hopefully, we'll be able to find a solution, although I cannot promise anything.

Toda,

David

[febrilephantasms]

Hello,

Just wanted to follow up with this, was there a workaround or something found? I am having the same issue. Got handed a .psd from someone else in our workflow and it was built using the East Asian text engine, but now I have to paste in an Arabic translation and the ME composer isn't actually changing the direction of my text, just flipping the justification.

Thanks,

Arielle

[giant JELLYFISH]

Hi Arielle,

I found the only way I could get around the bug in Photoshop is to reset the text to "system layout" (which removes any formatting),

and then to apply the right-to-left change.

A bit of a redundant way around and time-consuming if there is a lot of text in the document.

It certainly would be great to see a future release of Photoshop to return the functionality of being able to simply "flip" text boxes from LTR to RTL.

Just my 2-shekels worth.

peace out

[febrilephantasms]

Hello Jellyfish,

Thanks for your reply! I took your advice, but misread it, and I think I may have stumbled onto more suitable workaround. Instead of resetting the text to "system layout" try going into "hidden options" dropdown on the paragraph panel and resetting the paragraph. It unfortunately knocks out your paragraph formatting, but will keep your character formatting, and it flips the text proper ways around.

Hope that helps!

Arielle

[Rahzah]

Sorry about the DOUPLE POST in the other forum. Will try and delete.

[David Mohr]

Howdy MelyElly,

It sounds like you're actually running a much older version of Photoshop which doesn't have the Middle Eastern composer at all.  Photoshop 8 aka CS1 was released in October of 2003.  The current version is Photoshop 13.1 aka CS6.  We've made a lot of improvements in the last five versions / nine years, including full support for Arabic and Hebrew, although very limited support was available starting with CS4.

Thanks,
David

[MelyElly]

Thanks, so I have downloaded Photoshop CS6, and that works great for typing Hebrew. However, when I paste Hebrew text either from online or Word, the text direction flips, and all the words read from left to right rather than right to left. Can anyone help me fix that?

No matter how many times I try, it will not let me click Right-to-Left Character Direction in the Character menu:

Eager for a solution...

[giant JELLYFISH]

This is exactly what I am saying, the ability to flip story direction that was in previous Photoshop ME, CS5 and CS5.5 - namely the 'Apply Middle Eastern Text Composer' is gone!

I don't know if the developers of Photoshop at Adobe even are aware of this (however much we bleat about it here)!!

[MelyElly]

I figured out the right-to-left problem: you have to uncheck Kashidas and then the right-to-left becomes an option.

However, like giant JELLYFISH is saying, I cannot find the World-Ready Composer that would enable pasted Hebrew/Arabic text to be right-to-left. In the list where it should be, this is all I see:

As this Adobe CS6 help shows, the Paragraph menu is supposed to show these options (including World-Ready):

But my list (above) doesn't show World Ready... Hmm.

[MelyElly]

But perhaps that menu snapshot from Adobe was of the Photoshop CS6  Middle Eastern and North African Edition (MENA) Edition. I just spent forever chatting with Adobe support to try to find the World-Ready Compose feature in PS CS6 (including sharing what you said here, giant Jellyfish, about it being available on the previous version of Photoshop) and he basically just told me that I would have to purchase the Middle Eastern version.

[Chris Cox]

There is no Middle Eastern version of CS6 -- it's all one version now.  The person you spoke to was very confused.

The paragraph palette shown appears to be from InDesign.

[David Mohr]

Actually, there is a specific MENA (Middle Eastern and North African) version of Photoshop CS6, but that same functionality also exists in all other versions of Photoshop as well.  The MENA version merely defaults to the correct settings needed for Arabic, Hebrew, etc.  These settings can also be manually configured by the user.  Please see this video for details on how to access this functionality using ANY langauge version of Photoshop, whether French, Russian, Chinese, whatever -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfuw7m5mVTk. 

Shukran / Toda

David

[MelyElly]

What a great video, David—very well done. However, I can do all that (type in Hebrew) fine; the problem is when I try to paste a paragraph of text, then it flips left-to-right.

[David Mohr]

Howdy MelyElly,

How are you encountering this problem?  I find that when I've correctly set my text engine to MENA and enabled right-to-left text flow, that if I copy either Hebrew or Arabic from, say, Wikipedia, it pastes just fine.  If you type in Hebrew, does it go right-to-left?  Did you change the justification or the actual text flow (P looking icon on the bottom-left of the Paragraph palette when Middle Eastern options are enabled from the Type menu)?

I would be happy to do a brief, live connect session with you now to troubleshoot your problem, but I will be leaving the office in the next hour or so and not returning until the 15th of February.  Until then, unless you're in Turkey, Egypt, or Jordan, I'm afraid you'll have to wait for my return.  8-P

You can email me directly at dmohr@adobe.com

Thanks,
David

[MelyElly]

Thanks so much for your help David. I was just emailing you, and decided to check one more time to make sure I had everything correct, and this time it WORKED!!!!!!!  It's a miracle, because I don't think I did anything differently than I did before (but I must have missed one little thing somewhere—or maybe I just didn't restart Photoshop after enabling right-to-left text direction in the character menu). So, THANK YOU for persevering, and for your help!  You just saved me hours of typing!!!

Have a great trip!

[giant JELLYFISH]

Those fixes do kind of work for the problem that MelyElly has, but generally I design a website comp in Photoshop in English for a client, get an OK, then flip it to Right-to-Left for the Hebrew version. In CS5/5.5 the "Apply Middle Eastern Text Composer" worked fine for text stories, however, in CS6 it is non-existent and does not work for (what should be) a simple issue!!!

Please bring back "Apply Middle Eastern Text Composer" for CS6 or subsequent PS versions!!!

[David Mohr]

Howdy Jellyfish,

If you create your text box symmetrically, I don't see why flipping the flow of text wouldn't work.  It should hit the same functionality as the previous version, so long as you use the MENA composer for your English layer.  I did a brief test and didn't have a problem.  I'm on vacation, but perhaps when I return I could follow up with you.  Try this yourself though:

1) click Preferences > Type and set PS to use the Middle Eastern text engine

2) quit PS and relaunch

3) click Type > Language Options > Middle Eastern Features

4) open the Paragraph panel

From here, you can create the English comp using L2R text flow.  Once you're done, you can select the same text layer and switch to R2L and replace the English text with Hebrew.

Thanks,

David

[giant JELLYFISH]

Hi David - I know we've been over this a few times.

Taking a new doc with text stories created in PS6 as you state above indeed does produce the desired result.

However, taking a document from a previous version of Photoshop, for example a design comp in English,

if I follow the workflow you have below - it does not flip the logical ordering of the Hebrew as "Apply Middle Eastern Text Composer" produced in CS5/CS5.5

It is this that I will still keep bugging you about - I don't want to drop back to legacy versions of the program to do something I used to be able to do in Photoshop!

The only other way would be to recreate text stories, which in a  design would be long and arduous! (I can supply you with a PSD doc if you so desire).

Please bring back "Apply Middle Eastern Text Composer" !!!

[David Mohr]

Howdy MelyElly,

The screenshot you have posted is from AI or ID, NOT Photoshop.  Half of the features in that submenu don't exist in Photoshop either.  To use Middle Eastern features in Photoshop, you must enable the Middle Eastern text engine.  To do that, follow the steps found in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfuw7m5mVTk

Thanks,
David

[David Mohr]

Howdy VodafoneUser,

Check out this video for Photoshop --> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfuw7m5mVTk.

I'll be adding more over the next couple of months, giving folks a tour of the various MENA features.  Comments and bug-reports are quite welcome!  8-)

Other CS6 apps should have this functionality as well, although their method to access it might be a little different.

Shukran,
David

[vodafoneuser]

Hello,

I am alright  and U

I like ur video

I wil be diving into other apps to find up the ME method

keep it up

[desert_water]

Thanks David!

I am pretty sure your video will help a lot of people which are struggleling to find the Arabic feature in PS.

But what about InDesign and Illustrator?! Anybody knows how to enable it there?

Regards from the desert!

[David Mohr]

MarHaba Desert_Water,

Alas, but I only worked on the Photoshop implementation of this feature, but I do know that something similar was added to both Illustrator and InDesign.  Unfortunately, you'll have to talk to those teams about the specifics.

Sorry and good luck,

Regards from Silicon Valley!  8-)

David