About fonts

Last updated on Oct 27, 2025

Learn about common font terms, font types, and how to identify them using icons in Adobe Photoshop.

Font terminology

Term

Description

Font

A complete set of characters with a common weight, width, and style.

Typeface

A family of fonts that look similar and are meant to be used together. Many include special characters beyond the keyboard, such as ornaments, ligatures, and fractions.

Glyph

A specific form of a character. For example, in certain fonts, the capital letter A is available in several forms, such as swash and small caps.

Type style

A variation of a single font within a family, like bold, italic, or semibold. If a font doesn’t include a style you need, you can apply faux styles, such as simulated versions of bold, italic, superscript, etc.

Font types and their icons

You can preview fonts in the Character panel, Contextual Task Bar, and Properties panel. Use the following icons to identify font types:

  • Adobe fonts icon (previously Typekit icon)
  • OpenType icon
  • Type 1 icon
  • TrueType icon
  • Multiple Master icon
  • OpenType SVG icon
  • OpenType variable fonts icon
Tip

Select Type > Font Preview Size to turn off the font preview, or change the point size of font names.