What is the best way to store, organize & see fonts???

[plumbkrazy]

Ok-guys I'm new but have spent the last several days studing forums, tuts and perusing all the available fonts. My first thought was-download all the fonts I can while waiting the few days for my first vinyl order to get here. Well, as I read I see that, that may not be the best of ideas-fonts take up a lot of room on my hard drive, correct??? If this is the case how do you pros store all of your fonts? Do you somehow put them on an external drive or disk?

Next how do you see the fonts-I know I can see them on the actual SCAL software but they are kinda small and I know I can look in my Windows font files but that is a lot of opening and closing to find what I am looking for. I thought maybe I should print the font preview page and keep a 3-ringed binder of each font-but that seems like an awful lot of work.

Can some suggest an easier way of store & orgainzing fonts?

[sensationallychic]

You can purchase a thumb drive to save all you newly downloaded fonts on to help save space on your hard drive. As for viewing and organizing your fonts, I use a free program called AMP fontviewer and I absolutely love it! It allows you to temporarily install fonts on your computer right from the program you can also install/uninstall from it too! you can download it here http://www.ampsoft.net/utilities/FontViewer.php. HTH!

[plumbkrazy]

Very cool!!! Thank you much, I'll go check out the font viewer right now.

[plumbkrazy]

Hey Sensation-what a great program, thank you very much for the advice! I finally got a chance to sit down and play with it and I do have one question. Say I want to design something in SCAL with a temporary font and save it to be cut tomorrow. Since Amp deletes the temp fonts when it closes will my project still be in SCAL when I am ready to cut? Thanks again!!

[sensationallychic]

I'm not sure...as I have yet to create with a temporarily installed font. Since you are creating in SCAL I would think it probably wouldn't work since it needs it to be installed for the program to use. If you were using Ink to create, I think it would be ok as you would be saving it as an .svg file and that converts the font into a graphic. If you are worried, I would install the font until your project is finished and then use the uninstall feature to remove it from your hardrive. I have done this before and it worked like a charm! HTH BTW, it is an awesome program!!