If you’ve been following me for more than a little while you likely know I’ve written multiple posts about fonts. And in at least two posts I’ve talked about glyphs.

Well, the other day I had a revelation of sorts. Other than the post in which I was complaining about “missing” glyphs, I’ve never really talked about how to use all those fancy ligatures.

So, today I’m going to take care of that…

Using Glyphs

Way back in March of 2023, in my “Ready To Add Words?” post I actually touched on glyphs very lightly mentioning the “extra features” we get with an Open Type font. The bottom line is glyphs make our text look fancy! That is if we know how to use them.

For those of us creating digital art, we use glyphs almost exclusively in typography. That doesn’t mean that’s the only time. Some fonts come with lovely swash, flourish or swirl glyphs that can be used as decorative elements on a layout.

Before I go much further, I want to remind you that not only am I a Photoshop Elements (PSE) 2024 user, I also use Microsoft Windows 11. Everything I post about is driven by the Windows Platform & PSE.

And another heads-up. For this particular post, if you are not a Windows user, a lot of what I’m going to cover may not be very helpful for you as I know virtually nothing about using a Mac platform. I will try to point out alternatives to Windows when I can. But I may not be able to offer specific details.

Moving on. Back in March 2023 in my “What Is A Font Manager” post I talked about how font managers & the Microsoft Character Map make it easier to access any glyphs that come with a font.

There are a lot of font managers available and how you can access the glyphs in each can vary. Combine that with the fact that perhaps not many of you use a font manager, I’m going to concentrate on using a Character Map.

Character Maps

If you’re already familiar with using a character map, feel free to skip on down to the “Getting The Glyphs” section by clicking here.

Character Map apps help us view and use special characters that aren’t on our keyboards, such as accents, symbols, and characters (glyphs) in fonts. Most Character Map apps allow you to save or copy/paste these characters into other applications (PSE).

It is important to note that in order to access anything other than “system” fonts I need to ensure that the font(s) I’m looking for is either installed in the system font folder or activated in my font manager.

There are multiple Character Map applications available for both Windows and Mac platforms. In Windows there is a “built-in” Character Map:

I can access it by searching for “Character Map” in the Windows search bar.

The equivalent of a Character Map on macOS is the Character Viewer. Additionally, viewing all the characters available in a specific font on macOS, is accomplished by using the Font Book app. Just open Font Book, select the desired font, and then switch to “Repertoire” mode. This will display all glyphs (characters) included in the font. This is likely the option to provide the easiest access to font glyphs.

I cannot generate an image of the Mac Character Viewer since I don’t use a Mac platform. However, I was able to find a Font Book app graphic on the internet:

In Windows 11 this is how the Character Map appears:

This display box comes in a “one size fits all” format and cannot be made any larger. And the characters are all represented in a rather archaic (like in the 80s) form so it’s not very “pretty” to look at. But it does work.

All I have to do is scroll through the list of characters to find the glyph(s) I want to use. When I find a character that I want to use I simply click on it. Windows then shows a mildly larger version of the character. And I click the “Select” button. After I select the character(s) I want I just click the “Copy” button:

Windows places the character(s) in my Windows clipboard. Now here’s the tricky part of using this Windows “native” Character Map. It used to be that I couldn’t paste the copied character(s) directly into a blank PSE file. And here’s why.

Years ago, you couldn’t copy and paste glyphs from just about any Character Map (or even most font managers) directly into PSE because Photoshop Elements lacks a dedicated “Glyphs” panel, which is the primary tool in full Photoshop versions that allows access to and inserting of alternate characters or glyphs from a font. If you weren’t using full Photoshop, you could only paste these glyphs into a “text based” application.

However, today in PSE 2024 I can paste glyphs into a text box that is using the same font as what I used in the Character Map. I’m not sure in which version of PSE that change was made. I’ll be really honest with you…I gave up trying the copy/paste option back in the early 2000s because I learned a suitable workaround. More on that in a minute.

If the version of PSE that you’re using doesn’t support the standard copy/paste functions, the copied items may need to be pasted into Microsoft (MS) Word or other text based “app”.

Note: Given that a fair number of people may not be using PSE 2024, throughout the remainder of this post I will continue as if I do not have the option to paste into a text box when using PSE.

With the character(s) pasted into a text app (e.g., MS Word) I still need to select the character(s) and change the font to the same one I used in the Character Map. In this example I am using the Wishful Display font (shown in the character map above). I need to use that same font for the copied character(s).

I created a blank document (other than the “title”) in MS Word. On my system MS Word uses Calibri as the default font. If I paste the character(s) into a blank line without changing the font to Wishful Display I get this:

If I duplicate that line of text and change the font to Wishful Display, I get this:

If I place the first character on its own line, change the font size to around 150 and press Ctrl+C, I can place that character into my clipboard. Believe it or not, now I can paste that copied character into a PSE file:

It’s kind of small and yes, there is a white background. But these are easy to fix. I can resize it to however large I want/need and delete the white background. Unless I copied this character directly into a layout (on its own layer) I would now crop this file to size and save the character as a PNG for later use.

Seems like a lot of work just to get a special character (glyph), right? Yeah, it kind of is. But if you can’t paste into your version of PSE, it may be your only option.

But there is one other thing about the Windows “built-in” Character Map that can be an issue. As far as I’ve found in checking multiple “fancy fonts”, all of the glyphs don’t show up all of the time. Some font glyphs can be stored in a “Private Use Area” that the Windows “built-in” Character Map either doesn’t recognize or can’t display. And even if/when Windows recognizes this area, finding it is often next to impossible.

That’s actually the biggest reason I don’t use the Windows “built-in” Character Map. So how do I make all of this easier? Read on…

Alternate Character Maps

As I mentioned earlier, there are multiple Character Map Apps available for both Windows and Mac. The one which is currently suggested to be the best for Windows is “Character Map UWP”. It is available at the Microsoft Store and is free to download:

The app most suggest for Mac users is “Unicode Character Map”. It is available at the Apple App Store and is also free to download:

Since I don’t use a Mac platform, I can only show you examples for the Windows Character Map UWP app. So here we go…

From here on out I’ll refer to this app as simply “UWP”. When I open the app it looks like this:

Right away you should be able to tell that this is going to be a much nicer display…and it can be made full-screen if so needed.

You might be able to see that there is a settings (gear) icon near the top right corner of the display box. To be honest…I’ve never messed with it because I’ve never really needed to do more than what I’m about to show you. But you are welcome to explore the settings options on your own.

Note: I apologize if you can’t see all the words/icons clearly. It’s so hard to come up with an image size that works both on a desktop display and a tablet/phone display. If you right-click on an image in your browser, you should get a dropdown where you can select “Open image in new tab”. For some images in my posts this will display a larger version of what you see within the post itself.

Next, at the top left of the display where it says All Fonts, you should be able to see the down arrow to the left of that header. If I click on that down arrow I get this dropdown:

I don’t use this too frequently because I generally know exactly which specific font I want to see. But if you don’t have a font manager, this is a great way to look for fonts in a specific category. So that’s kind of a bonus to using this app.

And you may have noticed that just below that All Fonts header it shows how many font families are “loaded”. Right now, it says 909. Which to me is hysterical because I have waaaaaaaaaaay more fonts than that. But that’s because I don’t have my font manager running in the background. As soon as I start the font manager that number goes up to 1,746 font families! And that only accounts for the fonts I have activated 😉

Moving on. Let’s take another look at that search area:

So, below that number of font families you will find a search area with a little magnifying glass that says “Find a font family”. This is where I’ll type the name of the font I’ll be using today.

Off to the right-hand side of the main display (shown above) just to the left of the Settings (gear) icon, there is another search area with a little magnifying glass which reads “Search by name or unicode hex”. That is where I can type the name/code of a specific letter for which I want to see glyphs. I’ll be doing this in the next section so keep this area in mind.

There are other options that I’ll cover as I go through actually using the UWP app.

Getting The Glyphs

I recently ran a cross a new (for me) font that I’ve just been itching to use. And this post seemed a great time to play. Today the font I’m excited about is Edhan Martine available at 1001Fonts.

Notice how it says there are 150 ligatures? How could I not be drooling at this point 😉 But let’s see if we can find all 150 of those shall we.

Earlier I mentioned the “Private Use Area” where some glyphs can be found. For the Edhan Martine font there are over 200 ligatures in that area alone. Clearly, they aren’t included in that “150 ligatures” mentioned in that image above. So, I’m not 100% sure what the font creator considered a “ligature”. Over time I’ve come to not put much stock in the number of “promised” glyphs 😉

Within UWP, the “Private Use Area” is all the way at the bottom of the character display. When you’re looking for a glyph/ligature that may show up in a font preview such as the one above and you can’t find it quickly, don’t get too concerned. Just keep scrolling through the UWP until you get to the bottom.

Note: For those of you who may have “skipped” to this section without reading about Character Maps, I will be describing how to work with glyphs as if I do not have the option to paste into a text box when using PSE.

As is my habit, I’ll start with a 12×12 file and set the background color to white. I open the Horizontal Type tool, select the Edhan Martine font and use the following settings:

The Color is set to a medium dark blue (#003471), the Size to 100, Leading to Auto, Tracking to zero, Center Text and the Anti-aliasing box is checked. I used 100 as the size as I want this to show up nicely in my example images. If you’re following along, you can use whatever size fits your needs.

I draw a text box about 6 inches wide and 3 1/2 inches high near the center of the page. Then I just type my words:

Again, if you’re following along, you can make the text box whatever size you like just be sure the word “Los” is on a separate line from “Angeles”

I love how this font has what I’ll call “built-in” glyphs. By that I mean the fancy way some adjacent letters just automatically connect! To get this effect with a lot of other fonts I’d need to rely on (hope for) glyphs!

Even with those fancy connections I still want to jazz this up a bit more using some of the fun glyphs included with this font.

Now I go to the UWP app. Here you can see what happens once I typed in Edhan:

Because I already know what glyphs are available and what I want to do with this example word art, I’m going to start by searching for the capital letter L. So, I click in the top right search box (the area I mentioned in the previous section) and type in L:

Now I’ll go into some of the other options I didn’t mention earlier. If you look at the lower right section of the display you will see some information that wasn’t there when I first pulled up the font.

There’s now a listing for Typography Variations. And for this letter L it indicates there are three variations (including Default which is the “normal” L). To see the others all I have to do is click on the down arrow to the left of the word Default and a dropdown appears:

Even with this small image, you should be able to see that there are three versions of the letter L that are available from this section. I don’t mean to disappoint you but I have to tell you none of those are what I wanted.

Now I have to admit, the first time I did this type of search I was shocked that I didn’t see the one result I was hoping to see. But what I learned from that first search is this; if the glyph is in the “Private Use Area” I mentioned above, it will not show up in this drop down.

So, why didn’t I just go to that section? Because I wanted you to see how this works and wouldn’t be surprised if you ran into it on your own later. And now you already know how the dropdown works.

That said I’m going to scroll down to the “Private Use Area” and find the variation I do want:

Because this character is in the “Private Use Area”, UWP does not have any typography variations displayed for this character. This is why it doesn’t show up in that dropdown I tried above.

Note: When I created the images for this post UWP displayed a “header” at the beginning of this area. As of today, the UWP Character Map app may no longer specifically identify the “Private Use Area” due to changes in how it handles character encoding and font support. Please don’t be concerned if you can’t find the “heading” if you are using UWP. Additionally, the “Private Use Area” may not always be at the very bottom of the display.

Now with that glyph selected. You might be “guessing” that I will now likely click on Copy in the bottom right section below where it says “U+E10A, Private Use Area”:

Sadly, this would result in having to do exactly what I was trying to avoid…all those steps required using the Windows “built-in” Character Map.

Instead of copying this glyph, I am going to use the Save As function. This will give me a PNG version of this glyph, with a transparent background. This is so much simpler because the PNG is one, big, size and will not have the pesky white background I encountered earlier.

So, I click on Save As and this Pop-up displays:

You can see that this Pop-up is split into two sections: “Save as PNG image” and “Save as SVG image”. Unless you’re accustomed to dealing with Scaleable Vector Graphics (SVG) files outside of PSE, you won’t ever want to use the Save as SVG image section. PSE does not support SVG files.

That said, I click on Black Fill under Save as PNG image. You can choose white if you like. Either option will work as the glyph can be re-colored later.

At this point a Windows Explorer save as dialog box opens and I have to select the folder to which I want the file saved. Little secret here…I keep a folder on my desktop named “Blank Folder” that is a great repository for this type of situation. And it’s easier to get to than sorting through the OCD-type file organization structure I’ve created for myself 😊

Sorry…got a little off-topic there. UWP will default the name of the PNG to the font name plus the unicode hex name of the glyph. In my case the default file name is Edhan Martine Regular – U+E10A and I’m fine with that. You can change the name if you want.

Then I just click Save and Windows closes that dialog box.

Note: Just make sure you save yours somewhere you’ll remember…maybe even just your desktop.

I can now insert my glyph as an image into my PSE file:

Note: You can pull this into any program that allows images, including word processing, graphics software or even PDFs.

You can see that when I pulled the glyph image into PSE it is at full-size. But it won’t be a problem to resize the image. I just drag the corners to scale the image so the size of the L (by height) is consistent with what I have in my text box:

Don’t get confused by the underlying blue text. That’s really just there to help me keep things spaced properly.

As much as I like this glyph, I really wish the letter “o” looked more like one of the alternates for the upper-case letter “O”. But guess what? Because this glyph image is just that…an image, I can modify it. So that’s exactly what I’m going to do.

Note: Even if you have the ability to copy/paste glyphs into a text box with PSE, sometimes it is advantageous to still use the “Save as” option. Fact is, I almost always save my glyphs. And what I’m about to do is exactly one of the reasons.

Using the same steps I outlined above, I’m going to grab the capital “O” alternate from the Stylistic Set 1 (third down in the list):

I know…you’re wondering how this is going to work since it’s an uppercase “O”. Don’t forget…this too will ultimately be an image which can be re-sized.

So, I pull that new glyph into my file and resize it to match (as closely as possible) the existing “o” in the previous glyph:

Tada! I have my fancy glyph. And this is looking pretty good so far! Before I do anything else I am going to erase the not so fancy “o” from the original glyph. I can do this one of two ways: 1 – draw a selection around the “o” and just press the Delete key. Or 2 – just use the Eraser tool and a hard round brush. Either will work:

I can then unhide the fancy “o” and it looks exactly how I wanted. I then link the “L” and the fancy “o” layers together in case I need to move them. I want them to move as a unit so I can retain the integrity of their alignment. I could go the extra step and merge those two layers but it’s really not necessary.

Note: Because I deleted that “o” I now also have a new alternate for the capital L. If I save this “lone” L as a PNG file I’d have it for use another time. A nice little trick to keep in mind for later. Glyph PNGs can be modified.

Now it’s just a matter of grabbing the remaining glyphs I want to use! I won’t bore you with the step-by-step process for gathering the remaining letter glyphs. I just followed the same steps for each and here are the rest of the letter glyphs to dress up this word art:

I know this looks kind of messy right now with the original words behind. But this is exactly why I typed the words. Having this base helped me align all the glyphs in the proper positions.

The next thing I need to do is type (individually) the remaining standard letters (s, n, e & s) using the same font settings (other than color) I used at the beginning of this section: Color=black this time, Size=100, Leading=Auto, Tracking=zero and the Anti-aliasing box checked. Then I align them in their respective positions to complete the words:

Yes, it’s still messy but I’m going to hide the original text before I do one more thing. Do you see that star/sparkle “icon” in the center of that fancy “o”? Guess what…there’s a separate glyph (actually 2 sizes) that can be used independently. So, I want to add a little sparkle to my word art.

I go back to the UWP app and scroll all the way down to near the bottom of the “Private Use Area”:

And there they are. I outlined them in case they were too small for you to see easily. In the somewhat small image above, it may be hard for you to tell the one big difference between these two icons. The one that looks larger (Unicode name: U+E199,) is also a bit more elongated than the other. So, I’m actually going to grab both.

Once again, I just saved each of these as a PNG file. Then I pull them into my word art file and inserted a few of each version. Then I randomly scattered them at various points around the letters:

I zoomed in fairly close so you could see how those stars/sparkles looked. And you may have noticed that I did also close the gap a bit between the top word and the bottom word.

Now let’s take a quick look at the before and after:

What a difference a few glyphs can make. But don’t go too crazy. Adding too many glyphs to your word can make for a nearly illegible mess:

I hope this rather lengthy post makes you want to take a different look at some of your fonts! And as a bonus for you making it to the end, here are some other free fonts that have lovely glyphs for you to play with. They’re all available at dafont.com. Or just click the font name below to go directly to it:

Glyph Tips

Using glyphs can often require a bit of imagination. Don’t be afraid to experiment with your creativity here. And don’t sit there and say that you’re not creative. I know you are simply by virtue of the fact that you’ve read this post!

Looking at glyphs can make you rethink the look of your title. And this too takes an open mind and some creativity. A lot of people ignore (or are unaware of) glyphs. It’s amazing the whole new world that’s out there when you explore glyphs.

Don’t get too carried away with adding glyphs to your words. Remember the old adage; “Less is more!” This is so true with glyphs. If you add too many it makes your word crowded and difficult to read. Not to mention totally distracting when added to a layout.

Remember to think outside the box!!! Glyph PNGs are no different than any other image…they can be modified. If you find a glyph that you’d like to use but only part of it fits your particular word, just modify the glyph. As you saw above, I’ve actually on occasion, used pieces of multiple glyphs to create my own new alternate.

Glyph font pairing can be tricky. Try to avoid pairing two fonts with glyphs together. They’re quite ornate in nature and would compete with one another. It would also be a little tough on the eyes.

Pair thicker, heavier weighted-fonts with skinny fonts and script fonts with print font. And please try not to use ALL-CAPS with a glyph font. It’s just really unfortunate to look at and makes my eyes hurt (both literally and figuratively). On rare occasions they can work but please do this sparingly.

Don’t forget to try adding styles to your glyphs just as you might with any other word. Oh, and adding glitter to star/sparkle, swirl or swash type glyphs can be so fun!

Other than that…just have fun exploring glyphs with the UWP (or other) character map.

Thanks for reading this week’s Tuesday Tip. Remember, if you have any suggestions or questions please don’t hesitate to “Message Me“. Check back next week for a tip about a different way to use a frame! Click “Follow Me” to stay in touch. I hope you have a wonderful week!