Glyphs panel

Glyphs panel overview

You use the Glyphs panel to insert punctuation, superscript & subscript characters, currency symbols, numbers, specialized characters, as well as glyphs from other languages into text in Photoshop.

To access the panel, select Type > Panels > Glyphs panel or Window > Glyphs.

Photoshop Glyphs panel
Glyphs panel

A. Most-recently-used glyphs | B. Set font family | C. Set font style | D. Set font category | E. Glyph slots | F. Zoom out | G. Zoom slider | H. Zoom in | I. Scale down glyphs | J. Scale up glyphs | 

Work with Glyphs panel

  • To enter a glyph in an active text layer, do the following:
    1. Use the Text tool to place an insertion point where you want to place the glyph.
    2. Double-click a glyph in the Glyphs panel.
  • The Glyphs panel supports Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts. There is limited support for Hebrew, Arabic, and other complex scripts, such as Indic scripts.
  • For each font, the glyphs are organized into different categories, such as Basic Latin, Latin A, Latin B, Numbers, Currencies, Symbols, etc.
  • Glyphs are also organized by the OpenType features that the font supports, such as Alternates, Ornaments, Swash, Numerators, Denominators, Stylish Sets, Tabular Figures, Ordinals, etc.
Photoshop Glyph category, script, and OpenType features
Glyph category, script, and OpenType features supported by Adobe Garamond Pro font

A. Font Category | B. Script | C. OpenType features 

  • The Glyphs panel automatically finds alternatives to the first selected character in a run of text.
  • Glyph slots with a black-filled rectangle in the lower right corner indicate that there are alternatives available for that specific glyph. These alternatives can be accessed through a pop up by clicking and holding in the slot or Alt/Option clicking anywhere in the slot. Dragging a mouse cursor onto an alternate glyph and releasing it enters the glyph into the active text layer.
Photoshop Glyph slot
Glyph slot with a black-filled rectangle in the lower right corner

Photoshop Alternatives for the glyph
Alternatives for the glyph

  • Hover over a glyph slot to get specific details such as glyph ID, unicode value, OpenType feature, and the unicode name of the glyph in question.
Photoshop Glyph details
Glyph details

  • The slider at the bottom of the dialog allows the users to scale up or down the size of the glyphs in the panel.
  • The font menu is a full fledged font menu, with the same options as found in the Character panel and the Options bar. Font search, though, is not supported.
  • When multiple fonts are present in the Type layer text selection, the font face in the Character panel, Optionsbar, and the Glyphs panel blanks out.
  • The Glyphs panel can work without even initializing a type layer.

On-canvas glyph alternatives

When you're working in a Type layer, you can select a glyph to quickly view alternatives to it right on the canvas. Clicking the icon in the alternatives grid takes you to the Glyphs panel.

On-canvas glyph alternatives

If necessary, you can turn off this behavior. To do so, deselect Preferences > Type > Enable Type Layer Glyph Alternates.

Preference to enable/disable on-canvas glyph alternatives

Most-recently-used glyphs

As you add glyphs to your document, they are automatically added to the most-recently-used glyphs bar located at the top of the Glyphs panel. The most-recently-used glyphs bar:

  • can hold up to 25 different characters. Once the limit of 25 characters is reached, new glyphs are added to the left, with older glyphs being removed from the right. 
  • has persistent content. The content remains the same between different launches of the application.
  • retains the font face of a glyph and is not affected by the font face in the Options bar, Character panel, or the Glyphs panel.
  • defines the point size, color, and other values of a glyph by the values in the Character panel or the Options bar. 

Work with SVG fonts

Photoshop now supports SVG fonts that provide multiple colors and gradients in a single glyph. Photoshop ships with the EmojiOne SVG font. The Apple Color Emoji font is also supported on the macOS platform.

Follow these steps to use SVG fonts:

  1. Open the Glyphs panel (Window > Glyphs).
  2. Select EmojiOne or Apple Color Emoji (macOS-only) in the font list.
  3. Double-click an SVG font character to add it to a text layer in the document.

You can composite SVG font characters to create new glyphs. For example, you can create the flags of countries or change the skin color of single-person default characters. Many composite glyphs also disintegrate into their constituent characters when you press the Backspace key.

For more information, see SVG fonts.

Glyphs panel showing EmojiOne SVG font characters

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