When you install the Creative Suite, or any stand alone CS application (such as InDesign), a collection of Adobe fonts is also installed on your system. Prior to CS3, you may have noticed that there are certain fonts that only appear in the font menus of your Adobe applications. This is because in previous versions of the Creative Suite, the fonts were installed in a non-default directory. Here is the system location for that directory on both platforms:
Mac OS X: /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Fonts
Windows XP/Vista: :\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Fonts
Before CS3, in order to use these fonts in any non-Adobe applications, such as Microsoft Word or–dare I say–QuarkXPress, you had to move them into a default font directory on your system. Or if you use a font management application such as Suitcase Fusion, Suitcase For Windows, or Linotype Font Explorer, you had to place the fonts into your managed database, or point the font manager to the directory listed above.
Starting with CS3, the fonts were installed in the default directory for both platforms:
Mac OS X: /Library/Fonts
Windows XP/Vista: :\Windows\Fonts
This install location gives every user account access to the fonts, and allows each user to work with them in any application. It is not necessary to move the fonts manually as with previous versions of the Suite.
Fonts are software, and therefore evolve just like your applications do. As they are updated, new versions are made available. These updates can include better spacing, kerning, and even design. Most of the fonts installed with CS4 are newer versions of fonts installed by CS3. If the installer locates old versions of these fonts in the default directory, it uninstalls them and places them in a new directory:
Mac OS X: /Library/Application Support/Adobe/SavedFonts/current
Windows XP/Vista: :\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\SavedFonts\current
Inside the Saved Fonts directory is a Read Me.html file which lists the saved fonts, and the version numbers of the new and old font files. If the updated fonts are different enough to significantly alter a layout that you already have in production, you can re-install the older fonts by deleting the new font files from the default system font directory, and moving the old files back into that directory. Because they are named the same, they cannot co-exist in the same location.
This article was last modified on December 13, 2022
This article was first published on December 5, 2008
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