Fonts

[defaulttti6pugex5w0]

I've mentioned this before, seems so many other designers are struggling with this, but the type faces that are no longer supported - all the fonts we used now unable to work - and left with looking through a few pages of what Adobe Fonts offer, and not the same faces... this has actually started causing trouble for me/clients. I was told about an application, one time purchase, that you painstakingly go through all your old fonts and fix for use in today's PS etc. That sounds fun. Anyhow, just complaining as at one point I was able to bang out title treatments quick and now I'm pretty much lost, feels like the 80s. Will be calling in a tech to help figure it out. Bummer.

[davescm]

I assume the typefaces you can no longer access were Type 1 fonts.

https://helpx.adobe.com/uk/fonts/kb/postscript-type-1-fonts-end-of-support.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2X_DZRN66o

This video gives some info on why support has ended and also a couple of things you can do going forward (skip to 5 mins to bypass introduction)

Dave

[defaulttti6pugex5w0]

I wish I had time, loosing work as I type due to all this. No, don't have time to go through all the founderies, locate old licenses to see if I can get old fonts running again. Don't see a video. Just feels like there's an issue of money to be made (by Adobe) in all this.... It would be amazing if the fix was just, "Here, go to Adobe Fonts, nearly all of your old fonts are there - or type in a face and you'll get a near duplicate - and just turn it on!"

[davescm]

Apologies - I left the video link off, I've fixed that now

Dave

[defaulttti6pugex5w0]

Right, again, just wish there was a solve that was rather immediate. Scrolling through the video, thank you for that, but knowing the 'why' and most of the suggestions remain the same as to possible options isn't helping 😞  As one designer I know said when I asked, "Fonts!? It's a total mess, I don't know anyone celebrating at this moment!" Hunting a tech to help us out now.

[Conrad C]

I understand the problem, I’ve been doing this since the earliest days of desktop publishing, so I have a number of fonts going back to the early 1990s that can’t be used any more. I have not completely dealt with it, so there are still some fonts I have not replaced. (It might be easier to keep an older computer running those older applications and fonts.)

Although an immediate solution would be great, it seems like an immediate solution was anticipated a long time ago as not likely. I say that not to criticize how anyone is handling this, but only to point out that the decision was made to warn everyone long in advance. Years in advance, in fact. First in press releases, articles, and videos like the ones davescem posted. The first link in his reply was originally posted over two years ago. Naturally, many of us who saw those went “yeah yeah, I’ll deal to it later,” including myself. As noted earlier, Adobe kept supporting Type 1 even after others such as Microsoft dropped support. 

Then Adobe became more proactive and put brightly colored pop-up alerts up in Photoshop, InDesign, and others, warning that Type 1 font support was going away. I’ve been seeing those warnings for months, until the versions finally came that dropped the support.

So it isn’t like this just happened without warning. We were all given a years-long lead time, and many of us, again including myself, over those years have not yet fully taken action. It is a definite inconvenience, and an immediate solution would have been great, but the one thing we can’t say is that no one warned us. We were warned, starting several years ago, so that an immediate solution would not be necessary for those who took action at that time.

Also note that Apple itself no longer guarantees Type 1 fonts will work in the current version of macOS. In the Apple support article Install or Remove Fonts on Your Mac, Apple does not list Type 1 fonts as a format it “supports,” only saying Type 1 fonts “might work but aren’t recommended”:

Legacy suitcase TrueType fonts and PostScript Type 1 LWFN fonts might work but aren't recommended.

It is a lot like how large numbers of Mac applications stopped running on macOS 11 and later. Apple warned everyone years in advance that they were going to make radical changes to macOS and put up warnings when we ran software that was not compliant with upcoming requirements. We kept running them anyway, because major application upgrades cost money, and when the day came that Apple released the version that cut off non-compliant old versions, a lot of people complained about not being able to use what they paid for. Even though Apple had been warning us for years in advance.

I guess it’s just human nature to think that what we have will always be there and always work. But that is not always a realistic expectation, even in the non-digital world.

[Test Screen Name]

The immediate fix, surely, if you don't want to get up-to-date with your fonts is to not get up-to-date with Photoshop either? Just freeze both in time, it should work for a few years - until Apple/Microsoft also block the old fonts (no timescale for this, but warnings it will happen).

[defaulttti6pugex5w0]

I think the point I'm trying to make - and if someone knows where I'm missing this, great - is that yes, they warned us but seemingly made no effort or recommendation in regard to deal with it. Telling us it's coming, and seeing the warnings in the different apps is one thing, giving no real guidance as to dealing with it is another - again, unless I missed an fix. And I would say, I'm not opposed to upgrades in systems or applications and, yes, spending money to move into the future, I've done that, but there seems no options like this at all - unless you're talking about a 3rd party app that goes through all your fonts one by one. To be clear, I'm not holding on to the past - had no problem other than a learning curve when Quark went away - but at least there was InDesign which did the same thing. Offering fonts that 'resemble' old standards is not a realistic option. If they offered a way to "get up to date" with existing fonts, I'd be all in, obviously. I'm not being lazy, just finding no clear answers.

[kevin stohlmeyer]

Hi @defaulttti6pugex5w0 Photoshop is not a font management program. It uses fonts but its up to the user to manage your fonts, not Adobe.

One point you mentioned was 3rd party app. What are you using to manage your fonts? Extensis? Monotype?

Both of those font managers have options to find related or similar fonts. We had to go through this at our work with over 1,000 T1 fonts and it made a huge difference.

We found in most cases, previously licensed fonts were readily available as OpenType from the same foundries with a simple Google search.

[Conrad C]

I think your point is a good point, no real guidance was given about what to do. However, the problem might have been that the solution is not straightforward, because it depends a lot on what kinds of old fonts you have, and where they came from. If the fonts were common and currently exist in Adobe Fonts, then it’s easy, you just use the automatic font substitution/replacement feature that exists in several Adobe applications.

But Adobe never had a monopoly on fonts. Many font foundries produced thousands of fonts, including many specialty fonts. Some companies commissioned their own fonts. If those were Type 1 and are not available as OpenType, then the only solution today is someone has to go back to the masters and produce an OpenType version, or convert the Type 1 font files. And then make them available. So that would be the solution there, track down the sources of any fonts that are not currently available through Adobe Fonts and if there are OpenType upgrades available, and get them.

Naturally, if a designer bought a number of fonts over the last 30 years from several foundries, they’re going to have to track them all down, and hope they still exist and upgraded their font library to OpenType. 

But there will be complications. I can think of one typographer I know who produced her own fonts for decades, and she died in 2021. I once created a font of my own handwriting, but I have not gotten around to converting that…I’d have to buy software to open the old original font files.

So maybe part of the reason a simple solution wasn’t offered, is that a lot of the solution is outside the control of Adobe.

[defaulttti6pugex5w0]

Thanks Conrad, I think people are getting stuck on the idea that Adobe has some influence or control over foundries, I'm not saying that, and yes, the solutions are not straightforward, but when you think of this change and the number of designers, their customers, it has affected, to respond to Kevin, I'd think they would lay out detailed and varied options. Again, I just haven't seen any input other than the community scrambling.

Going through all our fonts would be rather epic, thousands actually. As to FontBook, that was just to illustrate the problem, generally we hunt faces the same as most - though on occasion I personally will pick it up and reference a face. Particularly like the 'faces that are similar' description.

Actually FontExplorer still exists, it is both cloud and downloadable, it just activates fonts that can't be used anymore, lol.

Onward.

[defaulttti6pugex5w0]

Thanks Kevin, not sure where you got the impression I thought Photoshop was a font managment program - or any program in the Adobe suite manages fonts. Again, what I'm saying is they, Adobe, warned and then, per the warning, stopped supporting these fonts, but didn't specifically map out what their users should do to remedy this.

As far as managing our fonts, we use FontExplorer, though that's pretty much useless at this point. One designer struggling with this wrote me:

"A note on fonts: you can convert existing type1 and Postscript fonts to Opentype with this Program: 

Transtype by Fontlab:

https://www.fontlab.com/font-converter/transtype/

You have to pay for it of course. But I warn you, this is a tedious and endlessly long process. Adobe really left us in the wind."

Dawned on me, so all the FontBooks we have laying around the office, you'd find a face you like then you'd have to locate the original license and go get it from the foundary... again? I sound like I'm complaining, which I am, and I wouldn't if it weren't for so many other designers complaining about the same thing.

[kevin stohlmeyer]

Hi @defaulttti6pugex5w0 I guess that is where we don't see eye to eye - what did you expect Adobe to "map out" for a process? The remedy is find replacement fonts - the options are varied.

We stopped using FontBook years ago. Between our Font Management server and Adobe Fonts, we have no need for it. Everything is centrally managed.

And yes, we did go through our entire library of Type 1 fonts, determine if they were still needed by the designers and if so, purchased new legal copies of the fonts as OpenType. Using conversion software breaks licensing agreements so we avoided that. With some of our licensing for Type 1 we were able to get updated OpenType for a discount or in some cases even free.

Exactly how many Type 1 fonts do you have in your library?

FYI FontExplorer is no more - it was bought by Monotype and is now cloud based.