Replace missing font with font of my choice in Photoshop CS5

Question

I'm using Photoshop CS5. How can I replace all instances of a missing font with a font of my choice?

Solution 1

It's possible but not as a straight forward process

There's not particular command or menu option or anything directly related to this in Photoshop itself, but it's still possible to substitute missing fonts by doing the following:

1. Select all text layers with the same missing fonts (they display a yellow asterisk on them) by using Ctrl + click technique

2. Open Character toolbar - if not visible, you can make it so by going to menu Window -> Character

3. Select appropriate font but don't change any other setting so layers will preserve all other font properties (size, weight, leading etc.)

That's it. Happy substituting.

Solution 2

This is not possible. Font substitution has always been horrible in Photoshop. It's a common feature request among the community, especially when Illustrator has a very good font substitution tool.

In a perfect world, every designer should include fonts with their psd.

Considering you already know the name of the font it shouldn't be too hard to find the exact font for which you can then install on your machine. Here are two of my favourite font websites.

Dafont, Font Squirrel If you don't find the exact font, try finding something similar then manually replace each occurrence. Selecting each layer in your layers menu then changing the font will help you to replace the font in one go.

Solution 3

Photoshop will only let you pick replacement fonts from the list of fonts that already exist in the document.

Therefore, the easiest way to fix this is to create a new layer group called "My Fonts" or something similar.

Then, drop in a text layer for each of the fonts you want to use. I just type the name of the font on each layer so it's clear even from the layer panel what fonts I have added.

After this, go back to the replace fonts dialog on the Type menu and you should be able to use the fonts from your machine.

This is extremely helpful when trying to match fonts prepared on a Mac with the same font on a Windows machine, or vice versa when the names are different. (If you use OpenType fonts, this shouldn't be an issue.)

Comments

[Josiah]

What? I'm afraid I (And apparently others), don't know what you mean. What missing fonts? And why would you want to replace them with a completely different font?

[Evanss]

Ive been sent a photoshop file which uses fonts that arnt on my computer. I need to choose a replacement font where its used.

[Josiah]

I see. Do you know that name of the font?

[Josiah]

Lol. Sorry, I don't use Photoshop, so I didn't know of you could tell. Anyway, you want to replace the font with a different one? Because I'm sure you could download the missing font online.

[Evanss]

There could still be licence limitations.

[Josiah]

Hmm, that is true. What font is it?

[feklee]

Say I found a similarly looking font on Dafont or Font Squirrel, then what's the next step? How do I replace it for the original font, if "Font substitution has always been horrible in Photoshop"?

[cfx]

This worked great, only annoyance is that you get a confirm box for each layer. For easier substituting it's also possible to place all layers with missing fonts into their own Group and simply perform one replacement on that group.

[CResults]

Thanks. Easiest solution for me, especially when the original designer mix/matches fonts in the same layer / text string

[Brett]

Unfortunately this doesn't retain the other settings for me.