In the following tutorial, you'll learn everything you need to know about Adobe Illustrator's Character panel. You can read this detailed written guide, and additionally, you can follow this new video from the Envato Tuts+ YouTube channel:
Illustrator's Character panel is one of the most essential instruments if you're looking to work with text in Illustrator. Besides the classic font, size, or style attributes, it provides access to more precise text settings. In this tutorial, we'll have a look at all the available settings, and hopefully by the end you'll understand much better the power that you have when working with text in Illustrator.
To start, let's learn how to show the Character panel in Illustrator. You can either go to Window > Type > Character or you can use the Control-T keyboard shortcut.
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By default, you'll have access to some of the most basic settings. To add the rest of the settings, you need to open the fly-out menu from the Character panel. Start by selecting Show Options, and then reopen the fly-out menu to enable the Snap to Glyph and Font Height Options, and also the Touch Type Tool.
As long as you have a text tool selected, you can also access the Character panel using the Control panel. Go to Window > Control if you can't see the Control panel.
Simply click the Character text, and this will open the Character fly-out panel. This can be pretty useful when you need to make some quick text adjustments.
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Focus on the Character panel, and let's start with the font. Just click that arrow button to open the Fonts list. At the top of the list you'll find the recently selected fonts (6), and below this list you have the variable fonts. Then the list continues with the rest of the fonts.
On the left side (1), you have the name of the font, and between parentheses is the number of available styles. You can click that arrow button on the left-hand side to have a look at all the available styles.
Next, you have a preview of the font (2). If you can't see it, you need to open the fly-out menu from the Character panel and Enable in-menu font previews.
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Use that wavy button (3) to quickly view similar fonts. Remember to click that Back button to remove the filter and return to the entire list of fonts.
On the right-hand side (5), you have a series of icons which indicate the type of the font: OpenType, Variable, TrueType, SVG, or Activated Adobe Font.
If you have hundreds of fonts installed, it might be a bit of a hassle to find the font that you like. Using the Filters, you can easily narrow down the list. First of all, if you know the name of the font, you can type the name in the font field and it will show up in the list.
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Click the Find More tab (1), and you can scroll through the fonts that Adobe provides. Once you find a font that you like, click that Activate button on the right-hand side, and the font can be used in your .
Moving to the Filters section, using the first button (2) you can filter your fonts by classification and properties. Just check the settings that interest you, and the list of available fonts will update accordingly.
Click the star button (3) from the Filters section whenever you want to view only the fonts that you marked as favorites.
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The next two buttons from the Filters section can be used to only view the recently added fonts (4) or the activated fonts (5). Keep in mind that you can combine these filters to narrow down the list of fonts as much as possible. Remember to click that Clear All button whenever you wish to remove all the filters.
Moving to the dropdown menu (6), this can be used to set the look of the font preview. By default, it will show a preview with your selected text. If you don't have any text selected, it will show a preview of the text Sample. Feel free to select one of the other preview options if you prefer to view the capital letters from a font, the numbers, or the symbols.
Selecting a variable font will also give you access to the Variable Font settings. Just click the button and minutely adjust your font using those sliders.
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Next, you have the Font Height Reference menu. The default Em Box displays the font size including the height of the bounding box around the font.
Select Cap Height to adjust the font size in reference to the uppercase letters. x-Height sets the font size with reference to the lowercase letters, such as x. Finally, use ICF box to set the font size with reference to the ICF box. This applies in general for CJK fonts.
Moving to the next set of settings, you can use these buttons to change the size of the text, increase or decrease the space between paragraphs, edit the kerning in Illustrator, or adjust the leading in Illustrator.
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Using the tiny arrow buttons, you can increase or decrease the font size by 1 px. Hold down the Shift key as you click these buttons to increase or decrease the size by 10 px.
Click the font size icon to quickly select the existing value, and press the up or down arrow buttons to increase or decrease the font size by 1 px. Again, you can also hold down the Shift key as you press the arrow buttons to increase or decrease the size by 10 px.
Finally, you can select the existing font size and type in the new value. Keep in mind that any of these techniques can also be used to adjust the leading, kerning, tracking, vertical or horizontal scale, baseline shift, and rotation.
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Leading is the distance measured from the baseline of one line of text to the baseline of the line above it. A baseline is the invisible line on which letters sit. Let's see how you can adjust the leading in Illustrator.
You can find the leading settings on the right-hand side of the font size settings. To edit the leading in Illustrator, you can use the same techniques that we used to adjust the font size.
Double-click the Leading icon from the Character panel whenever you wish to quickly change the leading value with the same value that's used for the font size.
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Alternatively, you can use a keyboard shortcut to edit the leading in Illustrator. Select your text and press Alt-Up Arrow or Alt-Down Arrow to decrease or increase the leading value by 2 px. Pressing Control-Alt-Up Arrow or Control-Alt-Down Arrow will decrease or increase the leading value by 10 px.
You can also set custom leading settings for specific lines of text from a paragraph. Use the Type Tool to select one or more lines of text from a paragraph and adjust the leading in Illustrator's Character panel.
Using Kerning in Illustrator, you can adjust the spacing between specific pairs of letters. You can find the kerning settings below the font size settings.
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Select a piece of text and make sure that the Type Tool (T) is active before you start kerning text in Illustrator. Click between two letters, focus on the Kerning box, and edit the existing value, thus adjusting the spacing between those two letters. When kerning is set to Auto (Metric kerning), the value appears between parentheses.
Metric kerning (Auto) is the default one, and it uses the kerning settings that come with most fonts. These settings set specific spacing values for particular combinations of letters, the most common being LA, P., To, Try, Ta, Tu, Te, Ty, Wa, WA, We, Wo, Ya, and Yo.
Optical kerning adjusts the letter spacing in Illustrator based on their shapes. This can be useful when you're using a font that lacks built‑in kerning, or if you use several typefaces or sizes in your text.
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Manual kerning is in your hands. Just click between the letters in your text and adjust the kerning values as you wish.
Kerning text in Illustrator can also be done using keyboard shortcuts. Click between the pair of letters and press Alt-Right Arrow or Alt-Left Arrow to increase or decrease the kerning by 20. Pressing Control-Alt-Right Arrow or Control-Alt-Left Arrow will increase or decrease the tracking by 100.
Using Tracking, you can change the space between letters in Adobe Illustrator. You can find the tracking settings below the leading settings.
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Select a piece of text, focus on the Tracking settings, and edit the existing value to easily adjust the font spacing in Illustrator.
As with kerning, you can use a keyboard shortcut to change the space between letters in Adobe Illustrator. Select your text and press Alt-Shift-Right Arrow or Alt-Shift-Left Arrow to increase or decrease the font spacing in Illustrator by 20. Pressing Control-Alt-Shift-Right Arrow or Control-Alt-Shift-Left Arrow will increase or decrease the tracking by 100.
You can also set custom tracking settings for specific characters from a word. Use the Type Tool to select one or more characters from a word and adjust the tracking value in the Character
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