Photoshop text spacing issue

Question

I am having a problem with letter spacing in Photoshop (CS5, Mac)

Word: Mister, "i" has too little spacing left and right.

This occurs when anti-aliasing is on "none" and is most noticeable on small text. I already experienced this problem before but fixed it somehow (was on Windows), can't figure out now.

I already tried to reset the settings. Did not help.

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UPDATE: Here are two screenshots. One from Windows 7 (with the Photoshop interface around it) and another (without the interface) is the same PSD file opened in Photoshop in OS X. You can clearly see the bugginess.

Windows:

OS X:

Answer 1

There is a lower limit to the readable size for any font.

The above is Windows Vista Wordpad, Arial at 14,12,11 and 10,9,8,7,6 points, viewed through the accessibility magnifier.

You can see the same problems at 7 points.

It isn't necessarily a problem with Photoshop in general. the Mac version of Photoshop or with Mac OS X.

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Update: The images in your updated answer do clearly show a difference between Windows and OS X typography. It does look almost as if OS X has substituted a different font and got the metrics slightly wrong. Here's a zoomed portion of your Windows and OSX images

The u is clearly different and the kerning is noticeably worse in the OS X sample. (Though it is clear one can't be too picky at these low dpi and small font sizes). Do Macs still use a different dpi to Windows (96)?

The headings "Arial 12pt" - though not in Arial, are clearly also even more different in the two samples - which suggests some font substitution is going on (at least for whatever font was used for the headings)

What happens if you type the same text in Arial 12pt into native apps on each platform (e.g. Wordpad on Windows and whatever is equivalent on OS X)?

Answer 2

Not sure why you'd want to turn off anti-aliasing, but if that's what you need, then really it's just an issue with the font being too small. An easy fix, however, is to increase the tracking (the space between the letters). You can do this by increasing the number in the box I've highlighted below.

Answer 3

I think the best solution is to put the cursor between the tightly spaced letters, hold down Option, and use the left and right arrow keys to adjust the kerning between those two characters (not the tracking, which is for increasing the letter spacing globally).

Answer 4

It all depends on which font you choose. Some fonts have proper kerning and hinting tables and some fonts do not. Some fonts kern and hint well at small point sizes and some do not. If you want to use a certain font, and it doesn't kern and hint automatically, you need to manually over-ride the kerning. Other fonts that are better quality will not require the extra work.

Answer 5

Some fonts just don't render well in small sizes. Here's what some fonts look at 12px in Photoshop (anti-aliasing set to None; kerning set to Metric).

If you must use really small text with no anti-aliasing, use pixel fonts for them. Note that pixel fonts need to be sized appropriately too. I prefer HaxrCorp, but here are other examples:

• http://www.alvit.de/blog/article/25-best-license-free-pixelfonts
• http://www.proggyfonts.com/