How do I get Extensis Suitcase X1 to auto-activate fonts in Photoshop CS?

March 2, 2005 8:33 PM

How do I get Extensis Suitcase X1 to auto-activate fonts in Photoshop CS?

The Extensis knowledgebase says:

Unfortunately no, Suitcase X1 does not auto-activate fonts for Adobe Photoshop. Alternatively, you can activate the fonts manually from Suitcase or create an application set.

That being said, does anyone know of a hack or plugin or magic potion that will get the 2 of them to work together? It's driving me batty.

posted by paulrockNJ to computers & internet (5 comments total)

This isn't really what you are looking for, but FontAgent Pro will do what you want. Not a shill, just a satisfied customer.
posted by ninthart at 2:57 AM on March 3, 2005

What are these programs for? The websites seem to be written for people who already "get it" and just want to buy the software. I'm interested in doing something to alleviate the headache of picking fonts in photoshop from the several thousand I've accrued in my font folder.

The system is so slow with all the fonts enabled, though, that I use Font Book to disable all the collections I'm not using right at the moment. When I need one, I enable it through Font Book (which is an incredibly tedious and lengthy procedure).

Do these pieces of software help in this regard? I'd want something that shows me a sample of the font -in- photoshop from whatever font I have in my system, -without- the slowdown.
posted by odinsdream at 6:49 AM on March 3, 2005

odinsdream:

These programs are font managers. That is, they allow you to control what fonts you have running on your system at any one time. As you've noted, having lots of fonts open causes slowdowns, so for designers who usually have collections of thousands of fonts, being able to open and close fonts on the fly is a must. These programs will allow you to do that. They will also allow you to look at the fonts to see what they look like without actually activating them, and they will also auto-activate fonts in particular programs so that you don't have to open and close fonts manually.

HTH...
posted by ninthart at 7:46 AM on March 3, 2005

To more directly address odinsdream's last question: No, a font manager will not let you sample through every font in your system more quickly in Photoshop. But they WILL let you preview fonts more quickly within the font management program's browser window itself, then activate just the ones you want to use. And they will generally do this in a much more efficient manner than FontBook does.

They also let you manage sets of fonts and classify fonts according to your own criteria so you can activate and deactivate them in batches as desired.

As for paulrockNJ's original question: I bet PS autoactivation will be in a newer version of Suitcase. And I bet they're going to make you pay full price for the upgrade. I use FontAgent Pro and I'd recommend switching to it like ninthart did, but it has its share of annoyances, too--like scanning and rebuilding your *entire font database* every time you add a new font.
posted by bcwinters at 10:38 AM on March 3, 2005

Yeah, that is pretty annoying. It's not so bad on the Dual G5 I use, as I can just let it work in the background, but not everyone's as fortunate as me. It is the one thing that I miss about Font Reserve. Adding fonts to that was a breeze. But the database on that was pretty wacky, and it wasn't going to get any better after Extensis bought it up...

I guess the reason that it scans the entire database is because of its repair functionality (it checks for corruption). But still...
posted by ninthart at 3:49 PM on March 3, 2005