Text Tool becomes Move Tool

Question

I started learning Photoshop CS4 about a month ago.  One of the first things I learned was to add text.  Simple, fun.  I am now trying to learn about layer masks.  One of the exercises in one of my books is to open an image and then add text to it.  (The idea is to then add a mask and 'hide' portions of the text behind portions of the image.)  A really strange thing is happening when I try to add text.  I highlight the image in the layers column.  (Prior to adding any mask layers.)  I then click the text tool.  But when I click on the image (in the area where I want the text), the text tool 'becomes' a move tool.  A text layer pops up and the words I'm trying to type on the image come out in the title area for the layer (in the layers column).  I've tried everything I can think of to 'get' the text on the image but can't solve it.  (And this has been a SIMPLE activity for a month!)  Can anyone exlain what's going on?  Thanks!

Answer 1

david h armitage wrote:
I tried 'committing' the text but it didn't seem to make any difference.  (I checked the 'tick' symbol and still couldn't see anything on the image.  The text layer, however, was 'titled' with the text I typed into the image.)  Here's one thought . . . yesterday when I was having trouble I wondered if the font size was the problem.  The font size was 48 when I clicked the text tool.  I thought that was a reasonable size.  In the course of trying to solve my problem (including resetting the text tool in the drop down menu) I resized the font to 300.  Then I could just see it.  I ended up with a font size of 400!  I wonder if the text has always been there but it was so small in relationship to the size of my image, it couldn't be displayed.  Is that possible?
It sounds as if your image resolution is so extreme that the text is not visible.
Look in Image > Image size and tell us the resolution