You can share font previews with colleagues via e-mail, Message, Air Drop, Twitter, Facebook and Flickr. You can also edit or create phrases for the preview text, use various languages, see all the number characters in a font, the ligatures it includes, and special characters such as $, &, and curly quotes. In the bottom preview panel, you can control the color of the preview, whether or not to use the font’s built-in kerning values in the preview, and apply your own tracking values. It will even show the slideshow as a transparent overlay on your documents. This is incredibly handy for exploring headline options on a document you have open in any program. Preview fonts as tiles or slide showsĪ Font Tile view displays a few characters in each font, helping you find a font that has a specific flavor or to quickly scan for the best font for a logo.įEX also lets you watch a slide show to flip through multiple fonts, and drag a sample over any area of your display - using your own text in any color, size, leading, tracking and so forth. This is incredibly useful for designers who use multiple versions of a font - otherwise, applications may remember your previous version when you’re using a newer one. Clean font cachesįEX can clean the font caches used by applications from Adobe, Quark and Microsoft, as well as by your Mac’s operating system. It can also export a report of a document’s fonts in plain text or XML format. It can then create a new Set from those fonts, activate them, and even let you purchase them if they’re not already in your library. Detect fonts in unopened documentsįEX can list the fonts used in many kinds of documents without opening them, including RTF, PDF, EPS, SVG, InDesign, QuarkXPress, Pages and Keynote. Auto-activate fonts when opening documentsįEX can automatically activate fonts used in documents as you open them, including those from Adobe and Quark (including placed graphics), and keeps track of the fonts each application has requested for activation. This feature is especially handy when using the Server version of FEX, because when users mouse over a Set, they see the comments added by the administrator. You can add Comments to sets to remember why you made them, or to educate other users about them. Until you name that set, you can add additional selected fonts to it by pressing Command-+ again.

This is helpful when you’re watching a slide show of possible fonts, or skimming through your font collection, and don’t want to be interrupted to create and name a set. Unique to FEX is the ability to create an “Ad hoc” set that you can add selected font(s) to with one keystroke (Command-+). A Smart Set can also be used to show your recently activated fonts, recently imported fonts, fonts that support a specific language, or that employ specific OpenType features. You can define “smart” sets that automatically list any fonts meeting your specific requirements, such as font format, manufacturer, classification, designer, number of activations, embedding rights, label, rating, and so on. You can create custom Sets of fonts to activate all at once, as well as “Application Sets” that activate when a specific application launches. Optional headers and footers can contain page numbers and your own custom information and graphics. It includes the five most commonly used layouts for specimen pages, but you can also customize each area or design your own and share them with others. This is one of the best implementations of font specimen printing I’ve encountered, and for some users would be valuable enough to justify buying the program. The best type specimen printerįEX can print type specimen (sample) pages, with an abundance of features for typophiles. If you want this level of font fun, you’ll need a Mac.) No more duplicates or damaged fontsīy default, FontExplorer X Pro (FEX for short) copies your fonts into its archive, in the process eliminating duplicate and damaged fonts. (Note: Monotype has a version of FontExplorer X Pro for Windows, but it doesn’t have the groovy features described below. If you have a large font collection, the following features will be simultaneously relieving and invigorating.

In this story, we’ll explore some designer-friendly features of Monotype’s FontExplorer X Pro that will get your inner font geek jumping up and down on your creative sofa. Font management is a fact of life for all creative professionals, and while the technical nuts-and-bolts of the process can be mind-numbingly complex, font management utilities also have features that are outrageously useful, educational, and fun.

Fontexplorer x pro 4.0.2