Before we go any further, let’s make sure we’re on the same page about where to find fonts in Photoshop itself. Select the Horizontal Type Tool from the Toolbar and look at the text menu in the Top Bar. Select the dropdown to see aaaaalllll of the fonts that come with Photoshop. Notice that typefaces with multiple fonts have their own dropdown menu. You can also filter this font menu to make it easier to find what you're looking for. Filter by different typeface categories—serif, handwritten, decorative, etc.

In the font menu in Photoshop, navigate to the top right where it says More From Adobe Fonts. Click on the Creative Cloud logo (or you can go to fonts.adobe.com). Adobe Fonts is basically a font family reunion. Soooo many font families. It’s easy to filter by the characteristics of the typeface that you want, like the typeface Classification or Properties. But if that’s a little complicated for you (if you’re on team “font” rather than team “typeface”), try using the Tags filter. It’s a visual representation of the characteristics of the typeface. Click on one of the Tags and you’ll see a bunch of font families that are related (they have similar characteristics). The coolest part about Adobe Fonts is that you can type in your text/name/sentence in the Sample Text box and it will show you what those words look like in each font!

When you find a font that you want to use, make sure that you’re signed in and click the Activate Fonts radio button. This will add the font directly to Photoshop and you should see it in Photoshop’s font dropdown menu. If you don’t, try restarting Photoshop.

I like this site for the name and the functionality. Ever see a graphic or design with a font that you like? You think, “Oh, I can find something similar for my design!”...Fast-forward through 30 frustrating minutes of searching and coming up with nothing. You want THAT font, and nothing else is looking just right. Let me introduce you to What The Font! It’s part of MyFonts.com. Just upload a screenshot of the design with the font that you like, and What The Font will tell you what font it is. It’s so easy, you won’t be yelling “what the f*&%!” anymore. (P.S. They’ll offer for you to buy their version of the font, but you can usually do a quick Google search and find it for free somewhere else.)

I can’t remember how I discovered this, but I’m glad I did. It’s an easy way to make your own font. It’s called Calligraphr.com. Just download the template, print it out, and write in all the characters. You could also open the template in Photoshop and create the characters there. This is how I used it to create a font of my late mother-in-law’s handwriting. I grabbed a bunch of her notebooks, and scanned in page after page to my computer. You have to make sure that you have a capital and lower case version of all the letters, plus several other special characters. Anything written on plain white paper will do. For any other background, I had to do a little work to cut out the letter. Once you have all the characters filled in, upload the file back to Calligraphr.com. It will generate a .ttf file that you can install on your computer, making the font usable in software like Photoshop.