Fonts in ACDSee

[CrystalMarie]

I read that you can organize your fonts in ACDSee. I've searched everything I can think of in the help section, and on this site but I can't fine out HOW to organize my fonts. I can view them, but they won't go into categories like photos will. Does anyone know how to do that? I only have a seven day trial, to help fast!! :) Thanks for any ideas.

[faerywings]

You can create your own categories in ACDSee. What I did is I brought all of my uninstalled fonts into a subfolder under my Scrapbooking Folder. This is in my "tree" on the left side.
Then I created sub-folders in that- for different styles of fonts.
I used
Handwriting, Script, dingbats, Billboard, Sports, Girlie, Grungy etc.
Then I just went though all of my thumbnails and dragged them to the right folder.
When I want to use the fonts, I go to the folder I want to use- for ex. Handwriting if I want to journal. Select all thumbs, Go up to Daatbase | Rebuild thumbnail metadata
(I think)
The I open my editing program and they are loaded in it.

If this doesn't make sense, let me know and I will post some screen shots for you.

[Emma]

so it follows the subfolder structure on your hard drive? No "tagging" per se?

[carlalee]

Hi Emma - I actually have my fonts tagged. I love hand written fonts and thus have WAY too many. I have them tagged with descriptors like flourish, block print or web dings. It makes searching for just the right font a lot easier. It has also taken some of the burden off my processor because I don't have to have all of my fonts installed. I keep only the default fonts installed and everything else is in a separate folder. Then I can grab them from ACDSee and use them in CS2. -c-

[Emma]

one thing I like about font organizers is selecting all my fonts of a type and dragging them to a category. Tagging takes a lot of repetitive typing/copy/paste which I won't do anymore. Can ACDSee do something liek the dragging rather than the typing?

[carlalee]

Hi Emma - Yes you can either drag and drop by highlighting everything you want to have the same tag and dragging to the category you want or by highlighting everything you want to have the same tag and clicking the checkbox of the desired category. I just read about dragging and dropping in other thread this morning about ACDSee and tried it out. Sure enough it works! I've always done the checkbox thing. Just a matter of preference (or in my case how I learned to do it originally). HTH -c-

[bensenc]

If you'd prefer to click on check boxes, click on the item to select it.

Then right click on it & select 'Properties' - at the bottom all of your categories will have check boxes on the left. check these to assign an item. Or you can click & drag onto them yet too

[Meryl]

Emma, have no worries tagging is so, so easy in ACDSee - I love using for fonts :) Go, download the free trial!

[Emma]

I actually just got a copy (:)) and picking all your brains rather than going it alone. I used to use it years ago, can't remember the version, maybe 5? And I really liked it. Back when the PS File Browser was a clunker and before PSE came out. I gave it up when it got old and went to PS Bridge: but it cannot tag PNG files, cannot preview its OWN ABR files (sheesh, what's wrong with them?!) nor fonts (and the new OTF font becoming a common standard is an Adobe invention as well!)

So I'm excited to have one program that can do all these tasks.

[CrystalMarie]

So, I use a lot of my fonts in Word. But like all of you, I have TONS and don't want to bog my computer down with them if I don't have to. But isnt it a big pain to not have them installed? I guess I'd have to go into ACDSee to find the one I wanted anyway, so from there, its easy to install the one you want to use? Also, can you explain where your fonts are a little more? Are they in sub folders in your WINDOWS fonts folder? Or are they in a totally seperate place like, say your Digital Scrapbooking folder, in sub folders? And you have them sorted in there and use and install them in ACDSee from there?

Thanks for the help.

[CrystalMarie]

Okay, so I just went and played around a little bit... here's what I found out.

I don't have Word installed on my computer (just got a new computer and my MS Office CDs are in storage... pout.), so I can't try anything out with that, which is a big bummer since I use it for so much. But anyway....

I'm using OpenOffice in the meantime, and no new installed fonts work in that program! Wierd! Really wierd, since the ones that installed automatically with some lettering software I installed, do work. Guess I'll have to figure that one out.

WordPad will use the font if the viewer of the font file is up on the screen. You know the window that pops up when you double click on a font name from windows explorer? But if I close the window, the font won't work anymore. Strange.

The fonts will work in both WordPad and PSP if the font is loaded into a category folder in ACDSee. How cool is that! I didnt have to 'rebuild thumbnails and metadata' either! I just dropped them into a category folder from my folders list on the left, and they are useable in both programs. No installing necessary. My WINDOWS fonts folder doesnt even have them in there. Very strange.

Does that all make sense? Do you all find the same things? Does that sound right?

[CrystalMarie]

Okay, so I just rebooted and I opened up the files I just made with the fonts I hadnt installed, but had put into categories in ACDSee. The jpg one showed up (obviously, since its just a graphic file) but the file I saved as .psp had to revert the text to Arial because it couldnt recognize the font I used since it wasnt installed.

The article at digiscrapinfo.com explained a lot:
http://digiscrapinfo.com/wordpress/2007/04/30/using-uninstalled-fonts-using-photo-manager-and-your-editor

I don't know... seems like too much of a pain to me... I wouldnt want to work on a layout again another day and have to go into ACDSee and make sure I displayed the thumbnails of the fonts, to make sure they worked on my page... is it really worth all that? It sure would be a lot easier to just install all the fonts... what do you all think?

[Emma]

PSP forces you to install or at least open a font to later edit a layout. PS and PSE allow you to just display the "pixel" info and if you want to edit the font that's when it forces it to be installed or replaces it. So unless you need to edit that text layer, you dno't have to install the font. In PSP it is more of a pain for that reason.

However, being able to view your UNinstalled fonts is vital since you don't want all those installed all the time. Using a font manager is the best way to do this.

I keep a BACK UP copy of all my fonts on my hard drive. Installing them puts a COPY in the Windows Fonts folder, and uninstalling DELETES that file, so that's why I have my other copy safe in My Files>Fonts.

[Emma]

can ACDsee have previews of fonts, like the font managers you can type in your words, and it displays that? All I can see right now are my JPEG samples and the TTF displayed using just the word Font. Is it capable of installing fonts from inside the program?

[carlalee]

Hi Emma - yes you can and here's (http://digiscrapinfo.com/wordpress/2007/04/17/acdsee-can-change-the-sample-text-of-your-font/) how. -c-

[faerywings]

Thanks for linking Carla --
And also for reminding me that I still have not done that with mine- I always mean to- but then I get distracted and forget :)

[sabina_canada]

yesssss, nooo, I don't understand, because I am a dummy. This is great and it sounds great for organizing fonts because it sounds fast, but how on earth do you get them to work in PSE ? Yes, please, help. I can't do it.

[sabina_canada]

wow, this look s great with ACD. Would you say that I should go with ACD i.e. download and try or carry on with PSE 5 which I have not used for organizing anything yet. I have kept all of my stuff OUTSIDE OF PSE. Also please tell me, if all of my stuff is being organized by ACD or PSE, would that not duplicate my storage space? in other words, all of it would be double on my computer?

there are times when I want to run, but I love this so much and yet it's so hard to soak everything up. So sorry for asking all these questions.

[faerywings]

sabina, I didn't see in this thread- did you try the free trial for Photo Manager? That is what I would do if you have not. It is a full program, and if you decide to purchase, you won't lose anything you have done with organizing. And if you decide that PSE organizer- PM is easy to uninstall.

Any of your tagging in PM also doesn't duplicate the actual files. What is does is create a database of the information you add to them. So for ex, if you tag one folder with multiple tags-the folder stays intact, but the info on the file is what "puts" it into different categories.

And for how to use uninstalled fonts: How to use Uninstalled Fonts in your scrapbooking program (http://digiscrapinfo.com/wordpress/2007/04/30/using-uninstalled-fonts-using-photo-manager-and-your-editor/)

HTH!

[sabina_canada]

thank you for your posting, Fairywings. Just one question: I have a genealogy program and when I enter a photo, it automatically makes the file larger, and it keeps the photo in its own program which means I have two of the same photos on my pc. Would ACD just pick up the lead, but not duplicate my photos and fonts if I organize all of it with ACD?
Is ACD easier than PSE? What are the opinions out there? PSE 5 Organizier is bothering me each time I start saving things to my own file...ughhhhh.

Thank you so much for your help. I never used ACD for organizing, so I have no idea. I just used it for the vignettes and found it perfect. But it was only a trial version and at that time I was rather sick and couldn't study it properly.

Thank you again,
Sabina.