making digital font have a more "finished" look

[heavenorlasvegas]

first post! here goes... 

 

I find that whenever i export a work from PS, the type has somewhat of a "cold" and "sterile" look to it. I've tried adding blur, and blending options in PS but it always lacks that "polished" look that you might see on a vintage movie poster or a record album for example. I've even tried printing, then scanning back in but that hasn't yielded the results i'm after either. 

Any advice for trying to achieve something more organic with digital font?

[heavenorlasvegas]

Here is an example, mine is on the right. The one on the left looks almost like it's printed on a white piece of paper, when it fact it's just a white digital background. 

[Riccardo Sartori]

I’m not sure what you are trying to achieve here.

These are the differences I spot between the samples:

• left one has a lower resolution, thus is blurrier due to pixellation;
• the text is black on the left and grey on the right;
• the spacing/kerning on the right has some issues.

Hope it can help.

[heavenorlasvegas]

4 hours ago, Riccardo Sartori said:

I’m not sure what you are trying to achieve here.

These are the differences I spot between the samples:

• left one has a lower resolution, thus is blurrier due to pixellation;
• the text is black on the left and grey on the right;
• the spacing/kerning on the right has some issues.

Hope it can help.

this helps, thank you. 

any advice for how to get better at spacing/kerning? does photoshop have the necessary tools for this? thanks again :) 

[Riccardo Sartori]

I am not familiar with the latest versions of Photoshop. In any case a good starting point could be Yves Peter’s four part series Adventures in Space.

[George Thomas]

Something important to know about PhotoShop is this: it is not a program designed for typesetting. You can never get as good a result with it. Use a professional-level program designed for producing quality typesetting such as InDesign or Quark XPress.

As always, the quality produced by any program is dependent upon the skill of the user.