Vector type problem

I can not get PS 6.1 to use vector type. I had to reinstall my photoshop and since then, all text is jagged at anything but normal zoom.

I could swear that it displayed text the way I wanted it to just a week ago, before I had to reinstall everything on my computer. Do I just not have some option selcted, or am I just incredibly stupid and it never did what I thought it did?

It is driving me absolutley crazy!!! Please help.

edit: I am pretty sure that this is not an anti-aliasing issue

You sure the options for your aa are checked? Look at the picture below and make certain you highlight one of the aa options on top of the Photoshop screen while you are typing (or have text highlighted).

Also, photoshop does not re-sample the anti-aliasing when you zoom in. It will simply blow up the pixels that were already there from the aa that was there at 100% screen size.

dman...

You can convert your type into vectors by going to your Main Menu bar. Drop down the Layers menu, scroll down to Type... and choose "Create work path." The result should then be a VERY accurate set of subpaths around your text. These paths will be more accurate than "create work path" when that command is used to convert a selection, because both TrueType and PostScript fonts have shapes that are defined by, and already contain, paths (Straight bitmap fonts won't produce these results, because they're made only of pixels). Once you've done this (and rename it in the Paths Palette if you want to save it or keep from overwriting your text paths), you may use the Direct Selection Tool or the Path Component Selection Tool to select some or all of the anchor points, which you can then manipulate.

You're right...it has absolutely nothing to do with any antialiasing settings. You can have your antialiasing set to "None" and still get smooth subpaths from type.

In the screen capture below, you can see that I've used Gill Sans Condensed Bold at 10 points, with antialiasing set to "None. You can also see at the top of the document window that the screenshot was made while I was zoomed in at 1600%. Notice the nice smooth paths around the pixellated raster text, which itself is almost unrecognisable as saying "OS X.x.x". At point sizes below 9, it IS unrecognisable. These paths were created by the method I spoke of above.

do you still need to export your paths to Illustrator to create or manipulate your font?

mine still wants to rasterize in the end. maybe I'm missing a step?

(sorry if I'm confusing people by getting off the topic. I'll make a new post if needed.)