Japanese in Photoshop CS3??

[Gundam Zero Force]

I never thought I'd have to ask a question about Photoshop myself but I happen to have one lol . . .

I have this font called "WP Japanese" and when I use it in Photoshop it does make Japanese Characters but I am not sure if it can use all the characters that are in the Japanese language. I am no pro when it comes to reading Japanese but forgive me if I am wrong, but aren't thier characters in Japanese that make up an entire phrase or word?? The WP Japanese font pretty much resembles the A-z and 1-0 characters in the english alphabet.

So my question is: Is there any plugin/font that Photoshop can use to have all the Japanese font characters?? Becasue right now if I type the word Hello the WP Japanese font types out letter for letter . . . . . but aren't thier characters in the Japanese language that mean an entire word? Sorry if I am totally incorrect or wrong, I don't know much about the language so forgive me for my stupidity but I would like to make sure what I type in Photoshop is actualy correct.

Thanks

[Ledgem]

Switch your font to MS Gothic (perhaps Tahoma would work as well) and then type in Japanese through Windows' Global IME (you must have installed the East Asian languages and have Japanese "installed" at your keyboard settings). If you're using a Mac, use the International settings and enable the Kotoeri input method. In theory, when you switch language input modes, your font should switch over to a font supporting Japanese.

If you want to stylize Japanese, then you'll need to look for special Japanese fonts. The font you're asking about may be one.

[Gundam Zero Force]

Switch your font to MS Gothic (perhaps Tahoma would work as well) and then type in Japanese through Windows' Global IME (you must have installed the East Asian languages and have Japanese "installed" at your keyboard settings)

OkThanks! I have Windows Vista so I'll see about installing the Japanese with the Vista CD I have. When I install it, will there be like a converter or something?? What I mean is I when I type something in Photoshop it will convert it to Japanese then?

[reflection]

Seems to me you're actually looking for a translator more than the ability to type in Japanese. I don't have any recommendations for any particular desktop translators though, since I haven't used one before. If you're just typing single words, some of the free online translators should be more than enough. But if you need to be able to do whole sentences you definitely need something more specialized. Also, this isn't something Photoshop specific, really.

Off-topic:

Originally Posted by Gundam Zero Force

I never thought I'd have to ask a question about Photoshop myself but I happen to have one lol . . .

Where is the Japanese modestness in that? j/k j/k~

[Gundam Zero Force]

Seems to me you're actually looking for a translator more than the ability to type in Japanese

No I am not looking for a tanslator. All I need is something like a font or like what Ledgem suggested. Now if I came across a translator that would be nic though.

Mainly I just want to make sure what type in Japanese actually says what it is supposed to. Like if I type a name in Japanese using the WP Japanese font I have to "assume" it is actually correct and if someone who could read Japanese saw it they'd know what name it was.

I figure if I am going to use this awesome language I'd better get it right instead of typing a bunch of nonsense making a fool of myself lol.

[Ledgem]

The way that the IME works is that you type in English characters (romaji) and it converts it for you as you go. I'm using a Mac system right now, but Kotoeri works the same way. It's not too difficult to pick up. Just note that when you hit spacebar, it'll convert what you typed to kanji (if applicable). Since there are multiple kanji with the same readings, hitting spacebar again will bring up a list from which you can select the kanji that you'd like. Similarly, the system is relatively good about knowing when to convert characters to katakana, but katakana is also selectable. You can even switch over to a katakana-only mode if you really desire to.

Note that IME also has an alpha-numberic entry mode, which is basically English only. So if you switch over to Japanese and you're still typing in regular English, make sure that the input is set to Hiragana (Windows XP shows this as a button with あ; Mac OS does as well)

[Zero Shinohara]

Zero-san to the rescue.

http://dict.regex.info/cgi-bin/j-e/dict

Enjoy

[Gundam Zero Force]

ok thanks for the replies, I really appreciate it

I now have Japanese installed on my Vista machine and it woks great. I can toggle between Japanese and enlish mode anytime now.

All I have to do is get used to using Global IME and stuff and I should be good to go. I found some help tutorials on it so I should be able to refrence those if I need to . . . .

The way that the IME works is that you type in English characters (romaji) and it converts it for you as you go. I'm using a Mac system right now, but Kotoeri works the same way. It's not too difficult to pick up. Just note that when you hit spacebar, it'll convert what you typed to kanji (if applicable). Since there are multiple kanji with the same readings, hitting spacebar again will bring up a list from which you can select the kanji that you'd like. Similarly, the system is relatively good about knowing when to convert characters to katakana, but katakana is also selectable. You can even switch over to a katakana-only mode if you really desire to.

ok I'll keep that in mind when I use IME. Thanks for all the help and info, it was really nice of you to take the time to do so.

Zero-san to the rescue.

http://dict.regex.info/cgi-bin/j-e/dict

Enjoy

nice! I'll have to give that website a try sometime . . . . it looks really cool

[Zero Shinohara]

nice! I'll have to give that website a try sometime . . . . it looks really cool

Yep, certainly. It's pretty comprehensive, you can search for a fraction of a word in Romanji and it'll look whichever word has that fragment you searched for. It also has Kanji, but I never got it to work. The dabase doesn't have a "lot" ( read - all ) of everyday-use words, but if you look for the starting letters of a word, there's a high probability that you can find what you're looking for. If you know a bit of japanese grammar, then it can really do wonders.

[Ledgem]

Originally Posted by Zero Shinohara

Yep, certainly. It's pretty comprehensive, you can search for a fraction of a word in Romanji and it'll look whichever word has that fragment you searched for. It also has Kanji, but I never got it to work. The dabase doesn't have a "lot" ( read - all ) of everyday-use words, but if you look for the starting letters of a word, there's a high probability that you can find what you're looking for. If you know a bit of japanese grammar, then it can really do wonders.

I use that site regularly, and highly recommend it. Occasionally the site chokes, so use one of the mirrors. (And if that mirror is choking, use a different mirror... it happens.)

The kanji search isn't all that difficult, actually. The way I do it is through stroke count. If you are able to write kanji or Chinese characters, you can frequently deduce the stroke count of a character by practice writing it; the stroke number is likely within one or two strokes of what you thought it was. Doing this alone can give back a massive amount of characters to search through. To make it faster, I keep track of radical codes. Entering a radical code(s) along with the stroke number greatly decreases the number of hits, and makes finding characters much easier. If you do a kanji search, you'll notice that it gives the radical code for the radical of the character entry; I write the radical and its code down. If you don't know what radicals are, you've some studying to do

Although unless you're actively reading/studying Japanese I'm not sure why you'd want to reference kanji.