Photoshop Tip #3: Bullets in Photoshop
April 12th, 2008
Comments12
It’s time for another quick Photoshop tip. The other day I was working on an HTML mockup in Photoshop and said, “Hey wouldn’t it be great if there were bullets”. My co-worker turns around and says you can make them, and it’s super easy. It’s not really like ordered or unordered lists in HTML; you still have to type in the numbers or bullets manually, but it’s as close as you’ll get.
Once you have your list created in a text box, go to the Paragraph window. Go to the Indent first line field and type in a negative value. For this example I have 11 pixel Verdana text with a -15px first indent.
From the screenshot above you can see we now have perfect bullets in our mockup.
sanish March 24, 2009 at 11:40 am
Thanks a lot .. its a nice trick
Lukas November 10, 2009 at 11:23 pm
…only your example doesnt contain any bullets, its a numbered list… this doesn’t show anyone how to insert bullets in photoshop.
Ian Hoar | Follow me on Twitter | November 11, 2009 at 10:45 am
Hi Lukas,
You can use anything character you want, just paste a bullet in where the numbers are. If you aren’t sure how to create a bullet just copy and paste this one. “•”
Scott December 23, 2009 at 1:34 am
I guess I’m just slow but this doesn’t have enough information for me. Where exactly do I paste the bullet in? Also when I put a -24 in my text it moves everything over to the left, what I want is to move to the right and have a bullet inserted in front of the text so I set it to 24. Why are you saying to use a negative number?
Ian Hoar | Follow me on Twitter | December 23, 2009 at 10:24 am
Scott, the negative number is for the bullets. You outdent only the first line of text with a number or bullet character.
Eric March 23, 2010 at 8:38 am
I’m confused. -15 first indent in photoshop doesn’t seem to give me bullets…. I get a -15 first indent.
Ian Hoar | Follow me on Twitter | March 23, 2010 at 9:39 am
Eric, it doesn’t actually generate the list like HTML does, you have to input the numbers or bullets on each line, but if you have a long list and want consistent looking bulleted lists or numbers it’s the best way I know of in Photoshop.
Jack Dallas April 4, 2010 at 4:53 pm
The tip above is good but to simplify things just go to the position where you want your bullet and hold down the Alt key and enter 0149 from your keypad. Once your bullet is entered I just hit the spacebar a few times to line up the first line with the rest of the text.
This needs to be done for each bullet. Just go to the first line of each bullet item and do the Alt 0149 thing.
Ian Hoar | Follow me on Twitter | April 4, 2010 at 6:16 pm
Hi Jack, I think this is how a lot of people do bullets, but when you get multiple lines on one bullet they will not always line up properly and you will have to mess around with the space between letters. I also do not think this is a faster method. Once you set up the the method used above you simply hit enter for each bullet and they line up automatically.
Note: alt 0149 is a PC only fast key.
Ed Ramos April 29, 2010 at 1:20 am
You might want to also use the Character Map Tool in Windows to find/select the bullet symbol. In Windows Vista look in;
START > ALL PROGRAMS > ACCESSORIES > SYSTEM TOOLS > CHARACTER MAP
Open the Character Map Tool, check the ‘Advanced view’ check box at the bottom of the tool window to open the search box. Enter the name of the symbol, bullet. Click search and bingo there it is. Then just copy/paste it where you want it.
Andrea May 28, 2010 at 8:58 am
Ian – Everyone seems to be giving you a hard time about this, but I thought it was perfect! Exactly what I was looking for, thanks!!
mcdotca July 19, 2010 at 9:01 pm
nice tip!! worked wonderfully