The text tool is one of the most powerful tools in your toolbox because it opens the door to a multitude of pre-designed font libraries. These font libraries allow you to create graphical versions of letters using pre-designed formats. Photoshop handles these font libraries just as it would any image. Thus you can do all the same things with fonts that you do with any other image in Photoshop.

To place text based images in your canvas you need only select the text tool from the toolbox and click on the canvas in the area you want the text to appear.

When you do so, the Type Tool Dialog will appear.

This dialog allows you to specify what characters you want displayed and many other font related options such as font type, size, alignment, style and characteristics.

We are going to spend a lot more time looking at how to manipulate text tomorrow, so for now, just get comfortable with the tool.

Notice that when you hit the "OK" button in the Type Tool Dialog, Photoshop will place the text within the canvas, but the text will be selected. Since it is selected, you can certainly drag it around and place it anywhere you want. We will talk more about selection tomorrow.