How do I create a "Table" in Photoshop?

[Jana Warren]

I can use the line tools and create the borders of a table I want text in, but as soon as I click off the layer, they disappear and they do not print. Any suggestions? I want to create a table like I would in Word, but I need it in Photoshop. Thanks for any help.

[Don McCahill]

PS is not a word-processor, it is an image processor. At one point in its evolution, it treated all text as pictures, and once you finished typing it, it could not be edited.

This has changed greatly over the years, and now PS finally has decent text editing. But it is not a word-processor, and tables are not something it does.

If you need tables, you should be using some other program. You might be able to fake it with PS, but you will have trouble making something easy to work with.

Now, when ps 8 is announced in the next few days, things may change, but I would not count on it.

[YrbkMgr]

One "manual" way would be to set up a grid, and snap guides to it. If you need the table outlined, make "cell" selections and Edit|Stroke.

[Jana Warren]

Thank you. I am trying to create a manual for someone with illustrations and tables and I didn't want to do it in two different programs, but I have found that it is very difficult to work with like this. YrbMgr- If I select a "cell" the lines are quite thick, is there a way to make the grid smaller so the lines come out thinner? Do you know what I mean?

[Gary Hummell]

You can adjust the line thickness by reducing the number of pixels indicated in the stroke dialog box.

I would suggest, like Don, that if you have to do a number of tables and illustrations that PageMaker, InDesign or Quark would be far less frustrating. For simple publications, the learning curve is not too bad for Pagemaker and InDesign.

Gary

[Don McCahill]

Jana

I would never try to do a book or manual with Photoshop. For one thing, it does not understand pages ... only single page documents.

You are, as Gary says, much better off to use PageMaker or InDesign for the text, and just import the PS illustrations into it.

[Neil Keller]

Jana,

Use an application for its strengths -- not its weaknesses.

Illustrations and photos can be imported, sized and laid out where and how you need them quickly then. Leave your editable typography for another app. But if you need something that has better design capabilities than Word does -- and Word is rather remedial in this department -- you need a page layout app, such as InDesign.

Neil