Changing a glyph & Photoshop CS2

homunculus · Post by **homunculus** » Tue Apr 03, 2007 2:14 am

I'm on WinXP and I'm trying to use FC 5.5 to change the contour of a single glyph, "n", in a TTF font called Mason Serif Super Bold, which I use a in a Photoshop CS2 document. I open FC, make the change, and save the font. The TTF file size changes slightly from 45.6KB to 43.8KB. I uninstall the old font and install the modified one using its old file name. When I open my Photoshop doc, I get a warning: "Some layers need to be modifed." Any attempt to access the font in the document ends with "Couldn't complete request due to program error." How can I change the glyph and have Photoshop replace the old font with the new one without problems? Thanks.

Bhikkhu Pesala · Post by **Bhikkhu Pesala** » Tue Apr 03, 2007 4:34 am

Are you closing Photoshop while you modify the font?

homunculus · Post by **homunculus** » Tue Apr 03, 2007 4:52 am

Are you closing Photoshop while you modify the font?

Yes, I close/open PS after each font install. BTW, I can always open the original doc in PS by reinstalling the unmodified font.

Erwin Denissen · Post by **Erwin Denissen** » Tue Apr 03, 2007 8:04 am

Could you please send both original and modified versions of the font to me? I'm not sure but it might help if you send the Photoshop document as well.

Erwin Denissen · Post by **Erwin Denissen** » Tue Apr 03, 2007 10:27 am

Thanks for sending the files. The modified font does not contain any bugs that should cause problems with Photoshop. What happens when you install the font and then create a new document with text formatted with the new font?

homunculus · Post by **homunculus** » Tue Apr 03, 2007 4:08 pm

I can't create a new doc with the modified font. I get "Could not complete your request because something prevented the text engine from being initialized." I can't see the font's "sample" in PS's font preview drop-down. The space next to the font's name is blank.

Erwin Denissen · Post by **Erwin Denissen** » Wed Apr 04, 2007 8:12 am

Maybe the Adobe font cache is damaged. Here is a post that shows how to fix that:
viewtopic.php?t=1731

Do let us know if this helps.

homunculus · Post by **homunculus** » Wed Apr 04, 2007 8:46 am

Whoopee! It worked. Thanks. Seems like the problem wasn't with the font, but with the caching mechanism. I'm sure the fact that the two fonts used the same name didn't help. Perhaps a better approach would be to leave the old font alone, give the modified font a new name and install it. In FC 5.5, when I go to Format->Naming, I see a number of fields that seem relevant: full font name, unique font identifier, version. Which of these fields should I change to make the new font register as a separate font in PS? Is changing the version enough?

Erwin Denissen · Post by **Erwin Denissen** » Wed Apr 04, 2007 9:10 am

homunculus wrote:Whoopee! It worked.

Thanks for letting us know!

Which of these fields should I change to make the new font register as a separate font in PS?

Why not use the Automatic Naming feature, located under Tools -> AutoNaming?

William · Post by **William** » Thu Apr 05, 2007 5:19 am

> Perhaps a better approach would be to leave the old font alone, give the modified font a new name and install it.

It is a good idea to use new names for both the font and for the file which contains it.

A good sequence is to Open the old file, then first use Save As... and save under a new name, not to the fonts directory of the system, just to an ordinary directory, or folder as a directory is sometimes called. I always use capital letters for the file name and do not use more than eight characters before the .TTF part, using capitals for TTF. Using capital letters and no more than eight characters before the .TTF part may not be necessary. However, as the eight characters limit was in the original DOS used for PCs and Windows was at least once and maybe is still for all I know built on top of DOS, I feel it safer to keep within those limits, though I could not say that it is essential to do so.

The next step is to use Tools ! Autonaming... . However, I usually close FontCreator and then start it again and open the new file before doing that. That may well not be necessary, yet I feel happier doing so, so that the original file has not been part of the current session of using FontCreator. For Font family name I do not exceed a total of 28 characters. I have a recollection from somewhere that that is a limit of some kind in some applications. That may not be based on fact, yet I do not exceed that supposed limit, just in case.

When developing a a font, such as my Chronicle Text, I develop the font in a series, such as Chronicle Text 001 in the file CHRON001.TTF then the next version is Chronicle Text 002 in CHRON002.TTF, and so on. I move to the next working version for each session of editing. They are each, in fact, version 1.00, though I do change the format of the date to the format day month year, for example, today is 5 April 2007. When I want to publish a version I first uninstall any previous version of Chronicle Text CHRONTXT.TTF, rename the file as CHRONTXTNNN.TTF where NNN is the value from the file name used to produce it, then produce using Save As.. from CHRONXXX.TTF the new file CHRONTXT.TTF containing Chronicle Text version XXX/100. I then delete unused glyphs and recalculate the two ranges from Format Settings... Ranges panel. I then validate the font again and Save.

If I want to develop a later version, I produce the next working file in sequence from the previous working file, renaming the font in the manner mentioned above.

Because I move to the next working version for each session of editing, there is often a gap of several steps in published versions; however if I have only added a few extra characters to a font the next published version may only be a version 0.01 upwards from the previous version.

I hope that this helps.

William Overington

5 April 2007