Photoshop Quick Tip: See Newly Installed Fonts Without Relaunching
Posted on September 13th, 2007 by BittBox
Have you ever installed a font you just downloaded, and had to restart Photoshop to see it in the list? Me too. I install fonts all the time, (while I have Photoshop open) and it’s not only annoying, but a waste of time to have to restart the entire application, just to see the new font you just installed. You can avoid restarting if you click “Reset Character” in the Palette options of the Character Palette after you install your new fonts.
I have run into situations where the actual file name differs from font name, and it doesn’t show up in the list where you expect it too. But this doesn’t mean that the “Reset Character” doesn’t work. You just have to look a little harder at your file names to find it in the list. :)
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This is a WONDERFUL feature. Thanks for sharing the tip — I hate having to restart so often!
Even more convenient is having a font browser such as Xtensis Suitcase the free Linotype FontExplorerX. Both allow you to browse and maintain a vast font library without having all of those 2,000 fonts active and slowing down the speed at which you can pinpoint the one you want.
Also, both come with Adobe product plugins that fire up the fonts in your programs of choice as soon as you activate them.
I use and recommend Linotype’s app. It works as well as Xtensis and free is a very good price. http://www.linotype.com/fontexplorerX
Thats really useful! Thanks a lot for that tip!
my gawd! been searchin’ for this, and never realize there is this feature !
thanks for sharing ! this is definitely save my time later on !
Great tip there, although I don’t use PS much. I have been dying to have this feature in Fireworks. Any chance you know if FW has this hidden somewhere?
Wow! Thanks for this tip.
great tip. thanks
Illustrator’s (equivalent?) ‘Reset Panel’ doesn’t appear to do anything… I still have to relaunch. Any tips?
Thanks so much, it works! One PS frustration down, 999 to go.
Jools
Holy crap. I can’t believe I missed that. How many times I have restarted PS. lol
Thanks for the heads up!
Fireworks has been good at this ever since the MX version. You don’t even have to click anything; the font just shows up in the list immediately. Not sure how they’ve had it figured out for so much longer than the PS team.
Its like the sky brightened up and a great beam of light pierced through. I can almost the hear the angels singing.
Does any one know if this in a feature in the rest of the CS3 applications?
I love your site! Thanks for all the tips/graphics. This little “feature” is a life saver. I HATE restarting photoshop just to see newly installed fonts.
Thanks!
I can’t believe I stumbled on such a small but very necessary tip. Thank you ever so much. This should be common knowledge! Annie
## Other Tip in windows it’s run control panel>fonts and see if the font was installed, and photoshop show us the new font ##
Try it!
What an awesome time saver tip! Thanks for sharing! :)
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I did not see this happening to me but I will keep this tip in mind. I do use different fonts and will come in handy if i face any problem
There’s an even easier method which I’m practising since.. ever:
Press and hold the shift key and click on the font-choose dropdown menü while having the text-editing tool selected. Instantly, you will have all new fonts installed.
Does Janshi’s tip work on Illustrator too?
Amazing….thanks so much for this
OMG!!! Thank you. I always do things the hard way (restart Photoshop). I knew there had to be a better way.
Great tips, thanks for sharing :)
I WAS LOOKING FOR SOMETHING LIKE THIS
awesome work
xx
Actually I believe all you have to do is hold down shift when you click on the text tool. It refreshes the font library. Been doing it since 1997.
awesome tip.. it’s going to save so much time!
thanks =)
Huh? :-/ I don’t know what’s the problem here…
I don’t have to re-launch Photoshop after installing new fonts as it is, and I don’t use any special font management software - just Font Book, included with the OS. And I don’t click any buttons or tick any boxes or anything - I just activate the font in Font Book, flip back to Photoshop and bling, there’s the font…
You don’t have to restart PS or reset the character in CS3 version of Photoshop. It shows in the font menu as soon as you copythe font to your fonts folder!
Actually the easiest thing to do is simply refresh your fonts folder after installing a new font. I don’t know if that works on MAC or not, but on Windows machines it does.