Converting & Installing PostScript and Type 1 Fonts

So, say you’re working on the high resolution, slick full-color brochure that will announce your web site. Your client gives you the basic outline, a few design ideas of her own . . . and a bunch of high-quality, commercial fonts that she thinks would look and purchased for the occasion.

You take a look at the fonts. The preview image looks great, and you immediately fall in love with those fonts. There’s just one tiny problem: They are all in .AFM and .PFB format. You would like to convert them to TTF, because that’s the way you (and Photoshop) work.

No problemo!

No need to go hunting down a “AFM to TTF” or “PFB to TTF” converter. If you’re running on a modestly up-to-date Windows operating system, everything you need is built-in.

Just go to Control Panel | Fonts to open the Windows Fonts directory that way. (Yes, you could just browse to Windows\Fonts, but doing is this way will enable you to open the Fonts directory exclusively in a new window.) Then click File | Install New Font….

 

Next, browse to the directory containing your font file(s).

The Add Fonts dialog box will automatically scan the selected directory for any available fonts and display them in the List of fonts.

Typically, you would click Select All to install the entire font set, but if you know what you’re doing and understand the implications of leaving one or more font variants unselected, go ahead and select only those font variants you wish to install at this time.

Ta-dah . . . all done. Even if you had Photoshop running when you installed the font, the font is now available for selection. Which is a big deal, because in the past, when I simply moved the fonts into the Fonts directory by dragging them from their original location into the Fonts directory, the fonts would not even show up in the Photoshop font list. Or I had to go back to the Fonts directory and double-click the font I just installed to preview it (and sort of initialize it and introduce it to the system).

At any rate, one more useful feature in the Fonts directory is the View | List Fonts By Similarity command. Selecting this command will display the contents of your Fonts directory by how close they are to each other in relation to their font attributes. Give it a try and see how you like it.

If you are curious about the various font formats, try this primer on fonts:
http://linux.about.com/library/howto/font/blfont0.htm

If you are looking for a free tool that allows you to look through your fonts collection, check out AMP Font Viewer.