AboutLizaL Expertise I've used Photoshop since the release of version 2. I taught college commercial art and graphic design for 10 years, and within that realm, taught Photoshop at every level, and with each successive product upgrade. My experience with Photoshop is thus extensive and well-rounded, from photo retouching to color adjustment to incorporating Photoshop and ImageReady into Web design. I am primarily a Mac user (since 1985), but am also PC-savvy.
Experience I've been a graphic designer for 22 years, was a national magazine art director, a designer for the Department of Defense, a college art instructor, and have my own freelance Web and graphic design business, LittleWorks (www.little-works.com). I've also worked for several printing companies, in both prepress and art.
Awards and Honors PICA award (Printing Industry of the Carolinas Award for the design of a media kit that accompanied a magazine I was art directing at the time)
Question How do I import a font that I downloaded from the internet, into photoshop, so I can use that font in photoshop?
I'm using Photoshop 7, I downloaded the font to my desktop folder, and cant get it to import into the fonts that are already in photoshop.
Answer Hi Ryan,
When you install a font on your computer, it's accessible to all your applications, not just Photoshop. You can kind of think of your fonts folder as a "pool" from which all your applications draw font information from. So any fonts you install in your fonts folder will be available in all your programs.
Once in a while you might find an application that's an exception to the rule, but the major applications -- like Photoshop, Word, Illustrator, etc. -- will all use the fonts stored in your system's fonts folder.
Now what you didn't tell me, which would help greatly for me to know, is whether or not you're using a Mac or PC, and which operating system you're using. It all depends on this information as to how you'll proceed. Yikes! :-) So I'll have to provide you with some quick, general information on all three.
You also didn't say which type of fonts you're installing, but basically the procedure is the same. There are three types of fonts you might have: OpenType, TrueType, or Postsctipt.
Here's the brief rundown on how to install fonts for Mac OS X and OS 9, and also a PC (I'm running Windows XP on my Dell).
If you're using Mac OS X:
Double-click on the font itself. This opens the small application called Font Book, and in the lower right-hand corner of the Font Book window, you'll see a button that says "Install Font." Click on this, and the font automatically installs.
I double-clicked on the Detective TrueType font, and it was automatically installed, using OS X's Font Book.
If you're using Mac OS 9:
Drag the font to the System folder, where you'll find a folder called Fonts. Drag the font into the Fonts folder. This is if it's a TrueType font.
If it's a PostScript font, you need to drag both the printer and the screen fonts into that Fonts folder within your system folder. See, PostScript fonts have two components (a screen font and a printer font), not just one, like a TrueType font.
If you're using a PC:
1. Click on your Start button, and then open the Control Panel.
2. Double-click the Fonts folder.
3. Select File, and then Install New Font. Now you need to navigate to where your fonts are located.
-- In the Drives list, select the drive and the folder containing the fonts you want to install.
-- In the Folders list, select a folder that has the fonts you want to install. Make sure you've unzipped them first, of course. The fonts in the folder appeara under List of Fonts.
4. Select the fonts you want to install. If you're installing more than one, hold down the Control key and click each font.
6. To copy the fonts to your Fonts folder, make sure the "Copy fonts to the Fonts folder" box is checked.
If you're installing fonts from a floppy or a CD, make sure this box is checked. Otherwise, you'll always need to keep the disk in the drive, in order to use the fonts.
7. Click OK, and that's it!
Now if you have Photoshop open, go ahead and quit it, and then open it again, and your font(s) should be available to you. Sometimes you need to quit an application and then reopen it in order for the new font(s) to show up.
And if for some reason you don't see the new font(s) the next time you open Photoshop, try restarting your machine.
If these procedures don't work, please post back and I'll be happy to help you figure out what went wrong!
And if you post back, PLEASE specify what computer you're using, and the operating system you're running, as well as the type of font you've downloaded.
