Fonts

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: 

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.

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).

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.

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.

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!"

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