How to Add Fonts to Photoshop

Have you ever scrolled through all your fonts and simply couldn’t find the right font for your work? When creating a visual project, finding the right font is key to what you want to convey with your design. For example, nobody uses Comic Sans unless they don’t want to be taken seriously. And you may remember Times New Roman as the go-to place for compositions and Arial as the default for website creators.

But with the unlimited fonts available online, it’s only a matter of time before you find yourself wanting to add new options to your repertoire.

How to Add Fonts to Photoshop

There are two ways needed to add fonts to Photoshop, you can either download and install the fonts on your computer and use them on Photoshop or you can go through your Creative Cloud account and add them through Adobe fonts. We will cover both methods here.

Download and install the font:

This is probably the best method as you can do it without logging into your Creative Cloud account, it’s free and you will have the font at your disposal to use for any program. any other program that uses fonts, not just Photoshop.

Step 1: Choose a font to download

I can’t stress this enough: always choose a reputable site to download files from. I’ve been using Dafont for over a decade now, but there are plenty of other apps you can use like Envato, 1001Fonts, Google Fonts, Creative Market, and many more.

Step 2: Click Download

I will choose “Somebody Else” to add to Photoshop. If you want to see the font family, click on their name on the left. To download the font, click Download on the right.

Step 3: Find the downloaded font

Your new font will be in a zip file in your Downloads folder. After you locate it, double click it to open it and find the actual font files inside.

Fonts usually come in TTF or OTF file formats. Both can be installed in Windows or Mac once downloaded. TTF or TrueType font files are an older format and are what you’ll likely see more often if you’re used to working with fonts. OTF or OpenType font files are a newer format with more extensible options, but to the average user both files are equally usable.

Step 4: Install the font

When you double click on a font file in your Downloads folder, a new window appears where you can preview the font and then click the Install Font button.

Once installed, your new font will show up on your computer.

Step 5: Use your font

Once installed, your font is ready to use immediately. Just open Photoshop and find your new font using the text tool.

Since you’ve downloaded and installed a font on your computer, you can now use it in Photoshop or anywhere you can. This includes Pages, Word, Excel, etc.

Using Adobe Fonts:

In addition to downloading and installing fonts, you can also add fonts directly in Photoshop using your Adobe Creative Cloud account. Here’s how to do it:

Step 1: Go to Adobe Fonts

Using the text tool in Photoshop, go to your font drop-down menu and click the Creative Cloud icon to browse Adobe fonts.

Step 2: Choose the font

This will open the Adobe fonts website, where you can search for fonts that meet your criteria. I chose a name called Hachura, the purple one with the words “All that snakes melt into the air”.

Step 3: Activate the font

Click the toggle next to Enable Font to add it to Photoshop. This will immediately add it to Photoshop and it will be ready to use in no time.

Just a helpful message from Adobe when you activate your font.

Step 4: The font is ready to use

The added Adobe fonts will be available immediately in Photoshop using the text tool and will go with you wherever you sign in to your Creative Cloud account.

Frequently asked questions