Fonts and their locations

Here's a recap of our discussion of font locations from today.


System Fonts
/System/Library/Fonts/



Don't touch these. These are the fonts that the Apple system needs to operate. Moving or deleting anything here can cause problems.




The Local Fonts Folder:
/Library/Fonts/



These fonts are available to all Users on a computer (all logins). This is where fonts that should be available across the entire computer (all users and applications) may be installed. 






The User Fonts Folder:
(the tilde (~) character stands for your user home folder, either "customer" in the lab or your apple "short name" *(i.e. /Users/scottadolan/Library/Fonts)
~/Library/Fonts/



The User font directory is the folder where you can add an remove fonts at will. Fonts placed in the User Fonts folder will be available to your login in all applications. This is where I recommend adding fonts for use with InDesign.


The InDesign Fonts folder
/Applications/Adobe InDesign CS5/Fonts/





Adobe allows you to make fonts available specifically to InDesign, by placing them in the InDesign Fonts folder. These will not necessarily be available to other Adobe Products like Illustrator or Photoshop.