Using Fonts in Photoshop

Font

A font is a complete set of characters—letters, numbers, and symbols—that share a common weight, width, and style, such as 10‑pt Adobe Garamond Bold.

Typeface

Typefaces (often called type families or font families) are collections of fonts that share an overall appearance, and are designed to be used together, such as Adobe Garamond. Typefaces include many characters in addition to the ones you see on your keyboard. Depending on the font, these characters can include ligatures, fractions, swashes, ornaments, ordinals, titling and stylistic alternates, superior and inferior characters, old‑style figures, and lining figures.

Glyph

A glyph is a specific form of a character. For example, in certain fonts, the capital letter A is available in several forms, such as swash and small cap.

Type style

A type style is a variant version of an individual font in a font family. Typically, the Roman or Plain (the actual name varies from family to family) member of a font family is the base font, which may include type styles such as regular, bold, semibold, italic, and bold italic. If a font doesn’t include the style you want, you can apply faux styles—simulated versions of bold, italic, superscript, subscript, all caps, and small caps styles.

To make fonts available to Photoshop and other Adobe Creative Cloud applications, see Activate fonts on your computer.

Improved Font browser with streamlined experience

Updated in Photoshop on desktop (version 25.7) April 2024 release

Seamlessly access and use more than 25,000 Adobe fonts from the cloud, now available in the More fonts tab, all without leaving Photoshop.

Hover over to preview them on canvas and use additional filters for languages, font class, and tags to search for them more efficiently.

Clicking on a font in the More fonts tab will download it to your system. Once a new font is added from the cloud, it will be added to all your Photoshop devices and Creative Cloud desktop apps to create a continuous editing experience across the Adobe ecosystem.

Navigate to the Properties panel > Character panel > Font dropdown to search for them.

Using Emoji Glyphs

New Emoji Font in Photoshop

With the October 2022 release of Photoshop 24.0, we have removed the EmojiOne font from our bundled font set and replaced it with Noto Color Emoji SVG.

When you open a legacy document containing a Type layer that uses EmojiOne, EmojiOne should be automatically activated and downloaded from the Adobe Fonts server.

Input Emoji using Glyphs Panel

To add Emoji glyphs to a Type layer via the Glyphs panel:

1. Choose the Type tool. Click anywhere on canvas or click-and-drag to create a new Type layer, or simply select an existing Type layer to enter text editing mode.
2. Select Noto Color Emoji SVG in your Fonts menu (in the Options bar, the Character panel, or the Properties panel). The Glyphs panel should open automatically.
3. Double-click any glyph to insert it into your Type layer. You can scroll down the panel to see all the emojis available in the selected font. Recently used glyphs are listed at the top of the Glyphs panel.

Also, you can see all composite glyphs by choosing Glyph Composition/Decomposition in the Set font category menu.

Input Emoji using Character Viewer (macOS only) 

On your macOS machine, you can do the following to add Emoji glyphs to a Type layer via Character Viewer:

1. Open Character Viewer by selecting Show Emoji & Symbols from the Keyboard menu in the menu bar.
2. Choose a category from the list — Smileys & People, Animals & Nature, etc.
3. Input an emoji by simply double-clicking on a glyph.

Input Emoji using the Emoji keyboard (Windows only)

On your Windows machine, you can do the following to add Emoji glyphs to a Type layer via Emoji keyboard:

1.  To open the Emoji keyboard on Windows 10 and later, press the Windows Key + . (period).
2. Input an emoji by single-clicking on a glyph in the viewer, or simply press Enter key when a glyph is selected.

Known issues and limitations

• Noto Color Emoji SVG font can be warped or converted to shape, but the color will be lost.
• Apple Color Emoji will disappear when warped, convert to frame, or convert to shape. Convert to the work path does not work. 
• Converting Apple Color Emoji to Noto Color Emoji SVG may change the glyphs. 
• You cannot change the color of SVG fonts (not only emoji). 
• You cannot change the color of Apple Color Emoji glyphs.
• When working with emojis, the default feature of automatically placing placeholder text may interfere with the font selection. To turn off the placeholder text, go to Preferences > Type. Uncheck Fill new type layer with placeholder text.

Automatically activate fonts

Introduced in Photoshop 21.2 (June 2020 release)

When you open a document that contains fonts that aren't installed on your computer, Photoshop automatically fetches and activates those missing fonts from Adobe Fonts while you're connected to the internet. 

When you open a document containing type layers, you may see a blue sync icon over some of the type layers in the Layers panel indicating an automatic activation of missing fonts from Adobe Fonts. As the download finishes, the sync icon is replaced by the standard type layer icon. You can now use the activated font in your document and also in other applications on your computer.

When you try to edit a type layer with a missing font while the font activation is in progress, Photoshop displays a dialog that asks you to replace the missing font with a default font and continue editing. In the dialog, you can choose any of the following:

• Replace: Select to replace missing fonts with the default font. For Roman text, the default font is Myriad Pro Regular.
  
• Cancel: Select to exit text-editing mode and resume activation of your missing Adobe Fonts.

Manage missing non-Adobe fonts

If you have a missing font in your document that is not available via Adobe Fonts, Photoshop displays a yellow missing font icon over the type layer the Layers panel.

If you try to transform a type layer with a missing font that is not available via Adobe Fonts, Photoshop displays a warning dialog informing you that your layer may look pixelated or blurry after transforming. In the dialog, you can choose to:

• Transform: Select to continue with the transform operation, knowing the limitation that your layer may look pixelated or blurry.
• Cancel: Select to cancel and replace the missing font. See the steps below.

If you try to edit a type layer with a missing font that is not available via Adobe Fonts, Photoshop displays a dialog that asks you to replace the missing font with a default font or manage missing fonts for your entire document. In the dialog, you can choose any of the following: 

• Manage: Select to open the Manage Missing Fonts dialog. See the steps below.
• Replace: Select to replace missing fonts with the default font. For Roman text, the default font is Myriad Pro Regular.
  
• Cancel: Select to exit out of text-editing mode.

Replace missing fonts

You can replace missing non-Adobe fonts with the default font or a font already used in the document.   

Match Fonts

Powered by Adobe Sensei

In Photoshop 21.2 (June 2020 release), Match Font has been improved to support more fonts, vertical text, and multiple-line detection.

Take the guesswork out of identifying certain fonts and let Photoshop do the hard work for you. Thanks to the magic of intelligent imaging analysis, using just a picture of a Roman/Latin or Japanese font, Photoshop can use machine learning to detect which font it is and match it to licensed fonts on your computer or on Adobe Fonts, suggesting similar fonts. 

Best practices for selecting text for font matching

• Match Font, font classification, and font similarity features currently work only for Roman/Latin and Japanese characters.
  
• Including two to three lines of text in the selection box give better results as compared to a single line of text.
  
• Closely crop the selection box to the left and right edges of the text.
  
• Use Match Font on a single typeface and style. Don't mix typefaces and styles inside the selection box.
  
• Straighten or correct perspective on the image before using Match Font.

Preview fonts

You can view samples of a font in the font family and font style menus in the Character panel and other areas in the application from where you can choose fonts. The following icons are used to indicate different kinds of fonts:

• Fonts from Adobe Fonts  (previously Typekit )
• OpenType 
• Type 1 
• TrueType 
• Multiple Master 
• OpenType SVG 
• OpenType variable fonts 

To turn off the preview feature or change the point size of font names choose Type > Font Preview Size, and choose an option.

Search for fonts

You can quickly access your preferred fonts by "starring" fonts as favorites.

More fonts

Browse additional fonts from the Adobe Fonts library to filter by Classification, Tags, and Language. Mouse over these fonts for live preview on the canvas.

Clear All

Remove any filters you've applied to either Your fonts or More fonts tabs, such as Adobe Fonts, Font class, additional Font Tags, Favorites, Similar, and Language filters.

While searching for fonts, you can narrow down the results by filtering fonts by classification, like Serif or Sans Serif, or by visual similarity. Further, you can choose to search among fonts installed on your computer or synchronized fonts from Adobe Fonts.

Tools for searching fonts

Filter the font list by classification, such as Serif, Script, and Handwritten.

Display only synchronized fonts from Adobe Fonts in the font list.

Show only starred fonts marked earlier as favorites.

Show fonts, including fonts from Adobe Fonts, that are visually similar to the selected font.

Choose a font and font style

• Choose a font filter in the Character panel or the Options bar. If more than one variant of a font family is installed on your computer—for example, Regular, Italic, Bold, and Bold Italic—the different variants are grouped under the same menu item. You can expand the item and select the desired variant.  

Notes:

• If the font family you chose does not include a bold or italic style, click the Faux Bold button  or the Faux Italic button  in the Character panel to apply a simulated style. Alternatively, choose Faux Bold or Faux Italic from the Character panel menu.
• Try dynamic shortcuts. Dynamic shortcuts are keyboard shortcuts that are available (in edit mode only from the Character panel menu) for Faux Bold, Faux Italic, All Caps, Small Caps, Superscript, Subscript, Underline, and Strikethrough.
• You cannot apply Faux Bold formatting to warped type.
  

Change the font on multiple layers

Glyph protection

Glyph protection protects against incorrect, unreadable characters that appear if you enter non‑roman text (for example, Japanese or Cyrillic) after selecting a roman font. By default, Photoshop provides glyph protection by automatically selecting an appropriate font. To disable glyph protection, deselect Enable Missing Glyph Protection in the Type preferences.

OpenType fonts

OpenType fonts use a single font file for both Windows and Macintosh computers, so you can move files from one platform to another without worrying about font substitution and other problems that cause text to reflow. They may include a number of features, such as swashes and discretionary ligatures, that aren’t available in current PostScript and TrueType fonts.

When working with an OpenType font, you can automatically substitute alternate glyphs, such as ligatures, small capitals, fractions, and old style proportional figures, in your text.

OpenType fonts use a single font file for both Windows and Macintosh computers, so you can move files from one platform to another without worrying about font substitution and other problems that cause text to reflow. They may include a number of features, such as swashes and discretionary ligatures, that aren’t available in current PostScript and TrueType fonts.

When working with an OpenType font, you can automatically substitute alternate glyphs, such as ligatures, small capitals, fractions, and old style proportional figures, in your text.

OpenType fonts may include an expanded character set and layout features to provide richer linguistic support and advanced typographic control. OpenType fonts from Adobe that include support for central European (CE) languages include the word “Pro,” as part of the font name in application font menus. OpenType fonts that don’t contain central European language support are labeled “Standard,” and have an “Std” suffix. All OpenType fonts can also be installed and used alongside PostScript Type 1 and TrueType fonts.

Apply OpenType features

OpenType SVG fonts

Photoshop supports OpenType SVG fonts and ships with the Trajan Color Concept as well as the EmojiOne font. OpenType SVG fonts provide multiple colors and gradients in a single glyph. On the Mac OS platform, the Apple Color Emoji font is supported to a limited extent, even though it is not an OpenType SVG font.

Emoji fonts are an example of OpenType SVG fonts. Using Emoji fonts, you can include a variety of colorful and graphical characters, such as smileys, flags, street signs, animals, people, food, and landmarks in your documents. OpenType SVG emoji fonts, such as the EmojiOne font, lets you create certain composite glyphs from one or more other glyphs. For example, you can create the flags of countries or change the skin color of certain glyphs depicting people.

For details, see Work with SVG fonts.

OpenType variable fonts

OpenType variable fonts support custom attributes like weight, width, slant, optical size, etc. Photoshop ships with several variable fonts for which you can adjust weight, width, and slant using convenient slider controls in the Properties panel. In the Character panel or Options bar, search for variable in the font list to look for variable fonts. Alternatively, look for the  icon next to the font name.

As you adjust the slider controls, Photoshop automatically chooses the type style closest to the current settings. For example, when you increase the slant for a Regular type style, Photoshop automatically changes it to a variant of Italic.