Expert: Glen Demers - 8/27/2009

Question
QUESTION: Hello!  I am using PS7 on XP, Lenovo Thinkpad.  I have some TTF Chinese fonts from this site at Heidelberg U.: http://www.sino.uni-heidelberg.de/edv/sinopc/chinese_fonts.htm.  I copied them into my windows/font folder like everybody says - and Word (office 2007) can find and use them, but they do not show up in Photoshop.  I also copied them into Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Fonts.  They still don't show up in Photoshop's font list. I've both restarted Photoshop and my computer. I can't copy and paste them from Word into PS either.  And I have other Chinese fonts on my computer and they do work in PS. Any ideas?

ANSWER: Hi Trisha,

Try using the Fonts control panel to copy the fonts too your font folder.

If you have too many fonts loaded, Photoshop will not show them all, or if the fonts are not high quality, they won't show up in Photoshop.

Select the chinese characters in Word and see if they stay chinese or revert to another font.

Make sure your font menu is set to display font names in English.

Hope this helps,
Glen Demers
Adobe Certified Expert, Photoshop 7
Prepress Technician, Best Printing Online
www.bestprintingonline.com

For more Photoshop tips please visit our help pages here: http://www.bestprintingonline.com/photoshop.htm

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Thanks for the fast reply - I'm still having problems with some of them though.

You said "Make sure your font menu is set to display font names in English.".  It was, but I deselected it and then some of them sort of showed up in Photoshop.  

In Word, the names of these fonts show up in Chinese characters.  Their files names are regular english letters though - like  HDZB_70.TTF.  Now, in PS, 5 of the 6 are listed, but all with the same name: By-JOSSQ-DMF-in-BeiJing (TT).  But - regardless of which of the 5 fonts I choose, I'm only getting 2 of the original 6 to actually work in PS.  

So it sounds to me like a naming issue where PS wasn't able to recognize them initially because their names were in Chinese characters, but now, maybe because they defaulted to a different name, the font creator, it can only distinguish between 2 of them.  Any idea of how to change the font names so I can use all 6?  Or any other suggestions?  Thanks!  

Answer
Hi Trisha,

I'm sorry, but I'm out of ideas. I work primarily in a Mac environment and have not had that much experience with CJK or double-byte fonts.
I do know that Photoshop can be a pain about fonts it doesn't like.

Perhaps you can ask someone else with more experience on a PC or with CJK fonts, or post a new question to me with CJK fonts in the subject line and I can forward it to the question pool for all our experts to view.

Sorry,
Glen