Apple Reviews

Adobe Type Manager is one of those classic Macintosh programs which allows you to turn on and off fonts on the fly, as well as print out samples. It fixes a few minor bugs in version 4.6 (such as non-activation of some fonts) and makes it fully compatable with Mac OS 9.x. Identifying Postscript & truetype fonts is also a breeze.

Unfortunately, this product includes fonts in the older PostScript "Type 1" font format instead of the newer OpenType format. Adobe sells an OpenType edition of Adobe Type Basics, but this is a download-only product. I wish Adobe would sell the OpenType Edition on CD.

Adobe Type Basics has been a lifesaver. About a year ago, my business partner and I launched a weekly newspaper. We knew our way around Adobe Photoshop, QuarkXpress and Adobe PageMaker, so we figured we were ready. Boy, were we wrong. We soon discovered we "didn't know jack" about fonts. We experienced reflow problems, missing fonts and other foul-ups, and our printer terrified us with even worse horror stories about what can happen when good type goes bad. Thankfully, a graphic designer tipped us to Adobe Type Basics. The CD (for Windows or Mac) contains 65 of Adobe's most popular typefaces, including test, display, script and symbol styles. It's a generous variety, without being overwhelming. An unexpected bonus was the inclusion of the Adobe Type Manager software to help organize our fonts. Adobe Type Basics is a great value.

I purchased this tool for the purpose of scanning camera-ready Native-American artwork for touch-ups and digital prepress, and found it to work wonderfully well. In the two years since purchasing Streamline, however, I have found that the resulting quality degrades quickly with the quality of input. I still feel as though Adobe could have taken this software package one step further and provided a more robust support for conversion and covered a wider range of export options.

I primarily use this product to scan pen or pencil drawings into EPS or AI files for Adobe Illustrator. Works like a charm and is very simple.