Hello, Erin here with a quick tip for lining up your alpha titles in Photoshop.

Sometimes titles look great with wonky angles, sometimes they just look better lined up and level, and sometimes you can combine them both for a fun look.  That is what I did on this layout.

(Credits:  Life is an Adventure, Life Captured April template, and alphas from Fresh Start, Favorites and Xmas is Coming)

So how do you get a perfectly aligned title when using an alpha? You can manually move your letters around, but it takes a keen eye to get them just right, and it can take a lot of time. A quicker and more precise way to line up your letters in Photoshop is to use the Layers drop down menu and it is actually easier than you might think. Let me walk you through. (Note I use Photoshop CS6, so other editions may be a bit different)

1. Open your document.

2. Pull the letters you want to use for a single word onto your document. Here I have pulled some of the fun pink alpha from Blossom.

3. Make sure you have them in the right order visually (meaning that when you look at your word on your screen you can read it) and with the general spacing you want.

4. Now select the layers that hold your chosen letters so that your layers panel looks like this.

5. Go to the Layers menu and scroll down to Align

6. Choose your preferred Alignment, I usually go with bottom edge

7. Now, if you want your letters evenly spaced horizontally, go back up to your layers menu and scroll down to distribute.

I usually choose Left Edge or Center.

8. Now, make any final adjustments you might need. With this title my horizontal spacing ended up looking funny due to the empty space in the Ls – so I manually moved some of the letters to the left. (Note – letters that have tails – like lowercase j, g, or y will not align correctly with the bottom alignment and will need special care.)

And there you are, a quick way to line up those alphas for a perfectly level title.