Photoshop: Allow user to change font sample text

illustrator now does it blazingly fast, shows you the entire font list with any word you're currently typing as the sample text. Proving it doesn't need to be slow. So, the illustrator team found a way. Go talk to them! 🙂

One year later the topic just sinked in the board and we still have to find out which font is it judging by the sample "Sample". Isn't that great?
I dismissed this feature and kept using third party services like...

https://www.fontsquirrel.com/matcherator
https://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/

And this extension to quick identify fonts in websites without inspecting them:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/whatfont/jabopobgcpjmedljpbcaablpmlmfcogm

You've clearly never even opened photoshop. While you're trying to audition fonts, the font dropdown covers up the artboard so you can't see anything. BRILLIANT. Only worthless.  Thanks for nothing.

After one year I stand by my opinion: Better a slow down than a les useful function. Any news? Thanks!

The most unique letters in a font would be most helpful. Lower-case a,g,e,d Uppercase A,G,I, E numerals 1,2,6,9,7. I agree, I'll take the speed hit. Waiting a bit for a useful function is far more valuable than the alternative.

I'm Ok also with the slow down, I care more about being able to identify the font which is what you need in the first place if using the option "Match font". You can have the right font and choose a different one just because you couldn't compare the right characters.

I would need to see more than 6 characters in the word "Sample", ideally, the alphabet and numbers. The quick brown fox... you know.

Also, maybe presenting the results in small groups would be an idea. Let's show the 5 more similar fonts and then, the next five, or the next 10.

«potentially slow Photoshop down considerably, because we would need to re-render that text in every font on your machine»
That is OK, as that is expected and expected to happen once. There can't be 'universal' word, as this may depend of user language. I.e. I would like sample text to contain English word, Russian word and a zero (to check if it has dot or slash inside)

Allowing a user to arbitrarily change the preview text would potentially slow Photoshop down considerably, because we would need to re-render that text in every font on your machine.

Do you have a suggestion for a better default word?

Also, are you familiar with the instant font preview we added in June 2014? With a type layer selected, you can scroll through you list of fonts and the on-canvas preview changes in real-time. This allows you to "try out" a number of different fonts with your own text, and in the context of your document.

Now that the Type -> Match Font feature has been released, this recommendation for changing the "Sample" text is very important.
...although it would still be useful in the original area of suggestion, when choosing a font for typing a new block of text.

 

The sample font size on the current Match Font tool makes it a challenge to compare the available fonts to the original font, and with few or no common letters, it becomes even more challenging.



In the example below, the lower-case letter "m" is the only overlap between "Rooms" and "Sample."  Viewing the recommended Typekit fonts in the image above, there appear to be none that are similar.

Face it. 'Sample' is a poor example. Let the user to define what he wants to see as sample text when choosing a font. And even better, allow him to store 3 choices and edit each one if necessary. He might want one with capitalized vowels, or vowels and consonants, or capitalized consonants or any mix, then, once set, he can choose one of the three he's defined, or redefine one that he's set. 'Sample' is lame.