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I’m trying to render a large version of one Apple’s new emojis in Photoshop.

I know how to write with emojis in something like TextEdit, but I need the emoji to have a transparent background.

I've even tried writing the emoji in TextEdit, and copying and pasting into Photoshop but I just get an unknown unicode character.

I see the font is “Apple Color Emoji” in TextEdit when I highlight the emoji, yet I can’t find that font in Photoshop.

Any idea on how to type emoji’s into a text box in Photoshop?

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According to this answer on the graphic design Stack Exchange site, you can activate “Show Keyboard & Character Viewers in menu bar” under “System Preferences… > Keyboard” for easy access to character sets:

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And then what you can do is type the emojis into TextEdit like this:

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And then use “Export as PDF…” from the “File” menu in that document to export that emoji as a PDF and then import that PDF into Photoshop or Illustrator and you should have a nice and clean transparency.

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Just note that I’m not 100% clear on whether it is best to increase the font size in the emoji in TextEdit to something close to what you want it to be rendered as in Photoshop or Illustrator. Or perhaps the PDF import process will treat that emoji “text” as scalable vector elements. But the overall concept should work fine; clunky but fine.

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  • I actually wrote the question knowing this method. It isn't the exact answer I'm looking for. I don't get why TextEdit shows the "Apple Color Emoji" font, yet it's not accessible in Photoshop?
    – Corey
    Apr 30, 2015 at 2:53
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    I'm going to mark this as the answer, because there is no other one according to this answer over on Graphic Exchange.
    – Corey
    Apr 30, 2015 at 3:01
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    I've tried getting that keyboard to show in Photoshop and I can't seem to.
    – Corey
    Apr 30, 2015 at 3:02
  • Not necessary to change menu settings. CTRL + CMD brings up the emoji menu. Does however, as you say, not work in Photoshop.
    – Chris
    Dec 16, 2017 at 19:46
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I had no issue using the Apple Colour Emoji font in PhotoShop CC 23.1.0, but please note that according to this question and answer, font anti aliasing (option between the font size dropdown and text alignment options at the top of the UI) must not be set to strong.

For whatever reason, setting anti aliasing to strong makes the emojis disappear.

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