How to view fonts used in a Photoshop file
Photoshop isn’t meant for designing print documents. If you want to create anything that is text heavy, Adobe has InDesign for that and the useful features that InDesign has are absent in Photoshop for obvious reasons. While Adobe may prefer that you take text heavy projects to InDesign, it really can’t force anyone to do so and many people just work with Photohshop. If you need to share a Photoshop file with someone, or you have one of your own and want to view fonts used in a Photoshop file without going to each text box, you can use a little trick with PDFs and Acrobat Reader.
Fonts in Photoshop file
This method has limitations that I’ve explained in detail so make sure you go through the Limitations section as well.
Open the Photoshop file that you want to view all fonts for. Once the file is open, and all its layers have properly loaded, go to File>Save As and save a copy of the file in PDF form. To do this, open the Save as type dropdown and select PDF from the list of supported file types.
You will see a bunch of windows with various options that you don’t need to change. Accept the settings as they are and export the file to PDF.
Next, download Adobe Reader. This is a free app from Adobe for opening PDF files. If you’re wondering whether or not other PDF readers will work in its place, it’s hard to say. Other PDF readers may or may not display the font information of a file as it isn’t very relevant if you just want to read the document.
Open the PDF file you just created in Adobe Reader and go to File>Properties.
In the Properties window, select the Fonts tab and you will get a list of all the fonts that were used in the PDF file.
Limitations
This method will only work if you still have the font installed on your system when you save the PSD file as a PDF. If you no longer have the font installed on your system, Photoshop will not be able to find it and subsequently, it will not be able to add its name to the PDF file.
If you’ve received a PSD file and it has several ‘missing’ fonts, you won’t be able to use this method to get the list of fonts in the file.
The font list cannot be exported or copied. You’re going to have to manually take the names down and then search for them. The fonts tab does not tell you where each font is used. If you do manage to find all the fonts and install them to your system, you won’t have any trouble working with the file.
