Add Fonts Into Photoshop Without Adding Them To Windows

If like me you use a ton of fonts for your Photoshop or Illustrator projects but you don't want to drag down the performance of other applications or you don't want to take the time to add them all to the Windows font folder then here is a quick easy way of adding them without facing these issues.

The trick is to put them into the Adobe common fonts folder under you program files folder (usually “C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Fonts\”) or if you are running a 64 bit OS such as Windows 7 64 bit (“C:\Program Files (x86)\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”, from there you can either add all your fonts directly into that folder or an even better step is to create sub-folders for easier organization. Then you add in all the fonts you want to use in and they will be loaded when Photoshop loads. Just keep in mind the more fonts you add the longer it takes Adobe Photoshop to load all these fonts so it will slow down load times. The benefit however is that Windows and all your other font using applications will perform better overall and load times for those applications will bemuch faster

Once you your fonts installed and hopefully organized you don’t have to reload Photoshop for the new fonts to start working, they should appear in the drop down menu right away.

This tip should work on any version of Photoshop above 5.5, including Photoshop 6, 7, CS, CS2, CS3 and CS4 (I haven't tested it on CS5).

Tip on font organization: I typically organize my fonts according to styles, type face ect. You won't notice the difference from the Photoshop drop-down however if you find a new artistic font you want to use in say MS Office and you have a bunch of artistic fonts loaded into an "artistic fonts folder" then its much easier to locate that individual font. Rather than than having to dig through hundreds of fonts you know its located in with the few artistic fonts in one single main folder.