Which one of these is best depends on your needs, but if you work with fonts on a regular basis, do yourself a favor and use a professional font manager.

* Highlight missing fonts and direct you to an online store to acquire them. * Find and resolve font conflicts and corruptions. * Organize, import and export by families, folders, sets, and libraries. * Search by name, foundry, format, and other properties. * Auto-activation of fonts upon opening a document. They’re all excellent tools, with different interfaces and varying features that include some or all of the following: The three most popular professional font managers are FontAgent Pro 4 ($99.95), Suitcase Fusion 2 ($99.95), and FontExplorer X Pro ($69), all available for both Mac and PC. However, professional font managers can do a lot more. A basic font manager such as Font Book, which is included with Mac OS 10.3 and up, can preview, install, search, activate, and deactivate fonts. The primary function of all font managers is to preview and activate only the fonts you need at a particular time. When they’re all activated all of the time, they slow down your machine and result in very long font menus. If you don’t have a lot of fonts, this might not be a problem, but if you’re a designer, you may have hundreds, if not thousands, of fonts. All of your fonts are activated all of the time, even ones you seldom use. Without a font manager, the Mac OS loads fonts into one of several Fonts folders. What is a font manager? Do I really need to buy one, since my Mac came with Font Book?Ī. If Ilene answers your question in the blog, you’ll receive one Official T-Shirt! Post your questions and comments by clicking on the Comments icon above. TypeTalk is a regular blog on typography.

Free font manager mac