HM2K.com » Design

Adding fonts into photoshop without adding them to windows

hm2k — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 17:15:54 +0000

If you use Photoshop for any kind of graphic or web design, you’ll understand the importance of having an array of fonts to choose from.

However, you may soon find yourself with a font overload. The problem is that once you get over about 1000 fonts in your Windows directory (usually “C:\Windows\Fonts\”) you’ll find that windows becomes very slow, particularly at startup.

To get around this, you don’t add the fonts to Windows, instead you add them into Photoshop, which is able to handle many more fonts than simply loading them into Windows.

The trick is to put them into the Adobe common fonts folder under program files (usually “C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Fonts\”).

You can get to this directory by going to Start > Run and issuing the following:

%ProgramFiles%\Common Files\Adobe\Fonts

This should bring you to a directory called “fonts”, place your fonts in here and they will be loaded when Photoshop loads.

The more fonts you put in here, the longer Adobe Photoshop will take to load, however, Windows will perform a lot better overall this way.

If you’re downloading fonts from dafont.com like me, you’ll find that you’ll need to extract them from the zip file before you place them into this directory, although to most people that should be obvious.

You don’t have to reload Photoshop for the new font to start working, it should appear in the drop down menu straight away.

I had to do this the other day for the first time in ages on a new machine I had setup Adobe Photoshop CS3 on. I realised that I had forgotten the details! Once I had reminded myself I figured I would write it up here for future reference.

This should work on any version of Photoshop above 5.5, including Photoshop 6, 7, CS, CS2, CS3 and CS4.

Hope this helps!

Missing accessories shortcuts from start menu on Windows XP I’m currently using a computer that has the “Remote Desktop...
Correct Documents and Settings folder on Windows 2000 Today I get a frantic call from a client who’s...
How to Disable Windows Messenger Why would you want to disable Windows Messenger? Well you...
How to restart the explorer shell in Windows XP If you have landed yourself here chances are you already...

Inspiration for Navigation menus in web design

hm2k — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 22:48:17 +0000

Sometimes when you’re designing a site you can find yourself wondering how is best to do a certain aspect.

More often than not navigation menus are one of these aspects.

We all need a little inspiration sometimes and it’s good to check trends to see what the best practice is or which is the most innovative.

Here’s a few places to get your inspiration…

Hope you find these as useful as I do!

Does using CSS affect SEO? I get asked this question time and time again. People...

Free icon sets for your website

hm2k — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 16:48:02 +0000

If you don’t have the time to make your own icons for your latest product or website, then you need to find some for free.

More often than not, the actual task of finding icons can be even more time consuming than if you made them yourself! Okay, maybe not, but pretty close, needless to say, they are often difficult to find as there aren’t that many going for free.

Here’s a list of free icon sets:

Icon Resources

Note: I may revisit this article at a later date.

Icon Software Over the past few weeks I’ve been assisting the creation...
Free Stuff I love free stuff, it’s probably why I like open...
Safely Remove Hardware Icon Here’s a quick guide on what to do if your...