Font Organizing

Happy New Year! I've got the organizing bug, so on that theme...

If you are like me, you have hundreds (or thousands) of fonts that you downloaded for free from various sites (my fav: DaFont.com - very organized, great fonts). Digging through these fonts can be challenging. I have two software recommendations for you that will help.

First a tip: DO NOT INSTALL ALL YOUR FONTS. This will terribly slow down your software, like Word, Illustrator, etc. because it tries loading them. Install your most used and leave the rest organized in a folder (on your machine or external hard drive). I have mine on both my main computer and a backup on an external hard drive - ready to use on any machine I'm near!

Okay, now that we have settled that - I have tried digging through all my fonts and putting them in sub folders based on theme, style, etc. I have never gotten past the "B"s. Yes, I have way too many fonts.

But I have do have many fonts organized in sub folders (the ones included on the PaperCents.com Font CD that comes with the Silhouette and Wishblade). And to sort through them and find the perfect font, I use AMP Font Viewer. It has worked splendidly for a long time. AND IT'S FREE.

You can preview many fonts at once and jump through your uninstalled fonts without having to install them. You can also categorize them here, but I prefer sorting them into sub folders. It's more permanent and flexible that way.

My new favorite font software is FontExpert, which I will probably purchase today (trial version expired). It costs $60, so you really need to be a font geek. I justify the cost in time saved.

After using the trial version, I'm kind of addicted. I have found it to be faster and easier to use than AMP Font Viewer. Also, I can organize the font files right in FontExpert. With AMP Font Viewer, I have to use Windows Explorer as well, and it's much more time consuming. You can try before you buy, so try it out and let me know what you think!

Do you have a favorite font software? I'd love to try it before I buy FontExpert!

And here are my font categories, if you are interested: _favorites (underscore keeps it at the top of the list), all-boy, all-girl, dingbat, fancy, funky, letterbat, plain-simple, print-cut-outline (for cutting the negative out), retro, script-handwriting.