Photoshop CC 2014 Typekit Integration

Back in April, Adobe announced that they were making the Typekit font product available to all users of the Creative Suite, at all subscriptions levels. This is a fantastic benefit for users of Photoshop within the Creative Cloud environment, and at that time, I put together a short how-to guide for using Typekit with your Creative Cloud subscription. Fast forward, and now Photoshop CC 2014 includes some very nice integration with Typekit. As a Creative Cloud member, you have access to a vast trove of excellent fonts for desktop use. In this tutorial, we’ll look at some of the new features for Photoshop CC 2014 Typekit integration – font management tools that make things a whole lot easier.

Resolving Missing Fonts

On of the first things you may notice, is that if you open a Photoshop document, and Photoshop detects that there are missing fonts, you’ll have the opportunity to map the missing fonts right away – using not only alternate fonts on your system, but fonts directly from the Typekit font library. Instead of the old cryptic dialog box, you get this:

As long as Typekit is enabled in your Creative Cloud desktop app, you’ll have the opportunity here to choose the appropriate Typekit font family, click Resolve Fonts, and the Typekit fonts are automatically downloaded to your system. It’s not even necessary to restart Photoshop. You’ll see the Creative Cloud app working in the background:

And then, you’ll see the fonts have been added:

At this point, they will show up in Photoshop, and your document will be updated.Photoshop CC 2014 Typekit Integration is just that – an integrated experience.

Live Font Preview

This feature isn’t exactly a Typekit feature, but Photoshop CC 2014 added a live font preview feature that is really slick. No more clicking on a font to preview it, then using the arrow keys to move through the font menu. Just highlight a type layer in the Layers panel with the Type tool active, and pull down the list of fonts. As you hove your cursor over the font names in the list, Photoshop previews the font face directly in your image, in real time.

Show Only Fonts from Typekit

Here’s where Photoshop CC 2014 Typekit Integration starts to hit its stride. Want to preview just the fonts from Typekit in the font panel? There’s a button for that. New to Photoshop CC 2014 is an icon in the font dropdown list – clicking this shows only Typekit fonts:

This is a great way to narrow down the list, if you’re wanting to see just your installed Typekit fonts. Click the icon again to turn off the filter.

Add Fonts from Typekit

Photoshop CC 2014 Typekit Integration doesn’t stop there. See the green Typekit icon in the upper left corner? Clicking that will take you right to the Typekit website where you can search for and add additional Typekit fonts:

Once you click the icon, your browser will open to the Typekit web page and you’ll be able to browse, search and manage (add, remove) Typekit fonts from your account See my tutorial here for tips on using this site:

Not using Typekit fonts? Have lots of other fonts already installed? There are some new cool features in the font panel of the Type toolbar, even if you aren’t using Typekit.

Filter and Search by Font Name

In Photoshop CC 2014, you can filter the fonts displayed in the dropdown list, just by typing part of the name. For example, if I type “bold” into the list, all fonts with “bold” in the name are displayed:

This works for partial matched, too. For example, typing “gara” matches all fonts with that pattern – including the various Garamond families, and even Niagara:

You can match multiple strings of characters, too. Here’s what comes up when I type “bo co” – the fonts that are bold condensed match, as do fonts like Bodoni MT Condensed. You can use your imagination here:

To summarize, Photoshop CC 2014 has some nice new features that have slipped in quietly. The Photoshop CC 2014 Typekit integration is fully featured and working will, and when you add to that the live font preview, and the pattern matching search capability, the Type tool’s font panel has come a long way towards being everything I have imagined it could be.