Adding symbols

I am working in PS and I am a complete NOOB when it comes to using it. All I need is a good quality symbol database to make a few things I am working on. I wanted to add US letters, chinese, japanese, etc to a texture and finding that all the symbols I can find are not good enough quality as they distort and fit in a small size of the screen. Anyone know of a free database? If not point me to a good low cost one? I didn't want to have spend USD and foot the bill etc. Wanted to keep cost recovery factor to a minimum.

Have you tried looking at some of the free font download websites? It would seem you could make a tiny image with the text in the font that produces the symbol you want. Then cut and paste that image into your final one? Just a thought to try maybe!

I would agree with Pendari. Fonts are probably the way to go, based on your description of what you're trying to do. www.acidfonts.com is a good place to start. They've got hundreds of free ones. Also, if you have MS Office, I think it has optional foreign fonts you can install, like Korean, Japanese, Cyrillic, etc. It's been a while since I've looked though, so I could be a little off on that.

You might also want to consider High Logic's Font Creator 5, which will allow you to make your own fonts, or edit existing ones. You could take one of those fuzzy symbols you mentioned, trace it in Font Creator to clean it up, and then assign it as a letter. Do 26 of them, and you've got a whole alphabet. You can get a free 30 day trial of the program at High Logic's website. If you decide to keep it, it's only about $60 US. Regardless of whether you keep the program or not, you will get to keep all the fonts you've made and installed to your OS forever, and they'll be available to every program you use.

Another (perhaps more obvious) answer is simply to get better at Photoshop, which will happen as you use the program. In time, the phrase "all the symbols I could find" won't even be in your vocabulary any more because your first instinct will be just to make whatever you need, rather than to go hunting around google for it. You might also seriously want to consider getting Adobe Illustrator. It goes hand in hand with Photoshop. It's kind of the ying to Photoshop's yang. Do the vectors in Illustrator and then move them over to Photoshop to do the rasters. If you're going to be making a lot of symbol-ish types of things, Illustrator is a must have.

Thanks I will definatly look into the options but doubt teh alphabet will work but the rest may.

try searching for clipart

Don't doubt, try.

I have Osgeld and the problem is they may be to small to use in the full application.

Krazz, are you creating a text-layer in PS, or are you pasting the symbols in as images?
Also can you give us a specific example of something you need to do (and what version of PS you're using) - we may be able to post and example PS file back to you showing what to do.

Sorry Ben just saw this reply. Current version I am not sure about. As for text/symbols I am using that is where ti gets intersting. I was looking at using regular Ascii stye letters and symbols which i know can be done using the text layer but also looking at things like chinese and egyptian symbols where one word is made out of oe symbol and are not part of the ascii system. Those types of symbols are what are throwing me off as the clipart I find only is VERY small.

What I do is to Google search for what I'm looking for, then grab it when it's found. I'll then save it as an 80x80 image and paste it onto a new layer. Using the Magic Wand tool with Shift held down, click on the area *outside* the main image. That should highlight everything around the actual image itself. Go up to Edit, and Cut as many times as necessary to get a smooth, seamless image.

Works great for tee-shirts.

ok well let me let the cat kinda out of the bag. I am working on something that will cover the entire viewable area like a blindfold but the text and/or symbol will be that large as well which means a graphic that does not look distorted on a 10m x 10m prim.