I’ve got to create a JPG in photoshop that has to have Japanese font (Hiragana, Katakana, Kanji). How is this done, and where can I get these fonts for Windows? I’ve done a google search, but all I found was Japanese word processors. I guess worst case I could use one of those, do a screen capture, and import that into Photoshop, but I’d rather just be able to use the font from within Photoshop. Any help is appreciated.
I’m not quite sure what you mean, but here are two solutions… Hopefully one of these will satisfy…
Do you need just Japanese type that doesn’t mean anything - a graphical element that looks authentic? In which case, try some of the sites mentioned in the thread below for Oriental ‘pictorial’ type fonts. You will probably find them under ‘dings’ ‘picture fonts’ or ‘clip fonts’. There are loads of free font sites out there, and you are sure to find what you want in no time if this is what you are after. Just look for free fonts using your favorite search engines, and check out the ones in the thread below:
http://www.sitepointforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=46988&highlight=fonts
However, it is a completely different matter if you need the type to say something in actual Japanese. You are into a whole different alphabet and grammar and I certainly wouldn’t trust any of the free font’s you get off the net to actually represent any sort of proper alphabet!!
For this, I personally would pay someone to write out the text in Japanese (bear with me!!). This shouldn’t cost much if there is only a bit of type (if you are clever with what you say, you might even get it for free!!). Then I would scan it in, turn it into greyscale, and adjust the levels so I had a good solid outline. Then I would take this into Freehand (or Illustrator/any good vector application should have this function), and ‘auto-trace’ it. This takes a bitmap image, and converts it to vector artwork. I would then clean this up (remove any stray points, smooth it out a bit), and there you go… perfect Japanese type! Once it is saved out of your vector application as an EPS, you can rasterise it any size you want in Photoshop, and you will get perfect smooth outlines. You could skip the ‘auto-trace’ stage, but it will make the type look much nicer quality if you spend a little more time on it. It’s also useful to have a vector EPS version lying around if the client requests the type to go onto printed artwork… you would have to do this process anyway for this (if you want a nice quality output!).
Hope this helps, and good luck!
I guess I should have clarified. My wife is Japanese, so I’ll get the translation for free :). The second method you posted sounds like it will be the answer. Thanks for the reply.
Perfect, you will certainly get it for free then (apart from maybe a little housework!!). If you need this process clarifying, drop another message in this thread, and I’ll take you through anything you don’t understand. The second method outlined above will give you a very nice, and more importantly accurate result!
Windows XP comes with a couple of Japanese fonts that work well with photoshop (for me).
I think that unless you have the Japanese version of Photoshop, it won’t handle double-bit characters natively. My suggestion would be a combination of the two that jonnya suggested.
Find a freeware font. I have one called Sword Kanji that uses authentic hiragana and kanji characters and simply maps them to the English keyboard. Have your wife write out what you want to say then find the corresponding character in the font and use that.
We faced the same problems until we finally obtained a Japanese version of Photoshop (Paintshop will do too). As for the Sword Kanji fonts: according to my wife (who also happens to be Japanese) their design seems to be rather Chinese than Japanese. Btw, they can be downloaded from here:
Will the Japanese version of Photoshop run on an English version of Windows 2000, or do I need to set up a new box with Windows 2000J?
According to my limited experience you could install a Japanese version of Photoshop on the same box provided you use a seperate partition with a Japanese OS (I’ve only tried that with Win98 so far).
Why go to all that trouble?? Surely it would be easier just to use the method below
For this, I personally would pay someone to write out the text in Japanese (bear with me!!). This shouldn’t cost much if there is only a bit of type (if you are clever with what you say, you might even get it for free!!). Then I would scan it in, turn it into greyscale, and adjust the levels so I had a good solid outline. Then I would take this into Freehand (or Illustrator/any good vector application should have this function), and ‘auto-trace’ it. This takes a bitmap image, and converts it to vector artwork. I would then clean this up (remove any stray points, smooth it out a bit), and there you go… perfect Japanese type! Once it is saved out of your vector application as an EPS, you can rasterise it any size you want in Photoshop, and you will get perfect smooth outlines. You could skip the ‘auto-trace’ stage, but it will make the type look much nicer quality if you spend a little more time on it. It’s also useful to have a vector EPS version lying around if the client requests the type to go onto printed artwork… you would have to do this process anyway for this (if you want a nice quality output!).
Also, as you said, your wife can write this out, so why go to the trouble of creating partitions/intalling os’es?!?
I suppose it pepends how much type you have got to do, but it seems you don’t have to do very much!! Will you have more work like this in the future? In which case in the long run it might be best to go for the long winded option.
jonnya, I agree with you that it would be overkill for what I originally posted about. I will most likely use your method for now, but I’ve been trying to get my wife to start learning web design so that she could do translations for any of my clients that may request it. I’m thinking the easiest way for her would be to have her own machine with Dreamweaver, Photoshop, etc. in Japanese.
Ahhh, it becomes a little clearer!! In this case, you may as well go for the whole Japanese partition, and use a DOS multi-operating system boot selection utility to switch between the two. Maybe not straight away, but in due time!
That’s quite right. The Jap version of PS will not work on English OS. Partition will do. Trust me, scanning is not the solution. Besides handwriting is not even clear enough. Especially if it is for print. We had it professionally translated and it came in .doc format, neatly typed and still it was a pain. The proof came out somewhat distorted, for some weird reason.
Or maybe it was just us. Shrug.
Trust me, scanning is not the solution. Besides handwriting is not even clear enough. Especially if it is for print.
Humph, I don’t think you quite grasped the technique I described. This would create a vector based EPS piece of artwork, that would scale to just about any size (and I’m talking massive!), and come out perfectly on any print job. Admitedly, it would be unsutable for any great deal of text (although it could be done if required!), in this instance I was imagining a few bits of type.
It would actually look even nicer if it WAS handwritten, as long as the original wasn’t very badly damaged. I think that this is esp true with the japanese subject matter, as it has a free-flowing lovely style to it anyway. As long as you get a reasonable res scan, with the Photoshop work you could clearly define the edges, and then contine with method descibed in previous post. I know, I have used this technique a few times in the past for commercial print, and remember one particularly bad one where I got a terrible fax of a very small signature… and still I managed to produced perfect print artwork from it (lovely smooth lines, no jaggies, almost identical to the proper sig!!) It’s all in the scan and Photoshop preperation. You basically wack the levels right out, magic wand a selection, smooth it a bit, tweek it a bit, and then fill it with black. You then use that image for creating the vector artwork with in your chosen vector app. Once you have got it into vectors, you can tweek it to perfection of course.
Yeah I know this is an old thread but anyway… what I do is use MS word using the Japanese IME - then I do I screen grab - open it in PS then copy the text and past to the pic I want to use it in. Just need to mess around with sizing a little.