Review: Suitcase Fusion 6

Hi. My name is Bob and I am a fontaholic. I have thousands of fonts from Adobe’s Font Folio and CorelDRAW Graphics Suite, plus countless others that I’ve acquired through the years. And I know I’m not alone. If you’re still reading then like me, you know that installing more than 4,000 fonts is going to cause all kinds of problems. Even scrolling through a list that long would drive me nuts. With that many fonts, a font manager isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity.

I’m now on my fourth version of Extensis Suitcase Fusion, having first used it at version 3 and I have been pleased with the improvements with each release. Version 6 is no exception. As a mature application, this is an evolutionary upgrade—and that’s not a bad thing.

While there are no earthshaking new features, this release is fully compatible with the newest operating systems, Yosemite and Windows 8.1. If you’ve recently upgraded your OS, or are thinking of doing so, this alone makes the upgrade to Suitcase Fusion 6 worthwhile to avoid incompatibilities.

The interface has been tweaked enough to notice—especially the flat UI– but it will still feel familiar to upgraders. If you’re running it on a Mac Retina display you should notice sharper previews. Unfortunately, I don’t have Retina hardware available to test this on.

Activation Tools

The core features are still there. It’s a snap to activate and deactivate fonts from within the application and auto-activation plugins are installed automatically for InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator and InCopy CS5 through CC2014 (note that CS4 and earlier are no longer supported). QuarkXpress versions 9 and 10 are also supported. With Extensis panels that are added to Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign, activation can even be accomplished without ever leaving those friendly confines.

Speaking of those panels they are now HTML5-based and noticeably faster and more responsive then the previous Flex-based panels. I used to leave them off most of the time but have added them to some of my saved workspaces to make accessing them quicker.

Font sets (groups of fonts) can be created easily by dragging and dropping fonts from the preview window. Once created, activation is a simple click. As with all font activations, you have a choice to activate temporarily (until you restart your computer) or permanently.

Beyond font activation

Suitcase Fusion is not just about font activation. It has a nice array of features that can inspire you and make it easier to collaborate with others. How many times have you needed to send a font sample to a client? I like to change the view of the font samples to paragraph, copy/paste in some text from a project, and then drag the small camera icon to the desktop. This creates a PNG file that can be emailed for review.

Need to compare fonts as they might look in a layout? Switch the preview mode to QuickComp and choose from 26 different layouts that can be changed by clicking on sections and choosing a font. Those layouts can be printed out from the application, but as I noted in my review for Suitcase Fusion 5, this feature seems a bit incomplete without a PDF export.

If you’re feeling the need for a creative spark, there’s a “Fontspiration” window. Click on any of the layouts and you’ll be taken to Extensis’ Pinterest page.

New and noteworthy: Archive and Restore

One terrific new feature that I’ve already taken advantage of is the ability to back-up your Font Vault to either Dropbox or GoogleDrive. By doing so, you’ll have ability to share your configuration with others (subject to font licenses) or to keep two of your machines in sync with each other.

This feature only works within the same platform but it’s remarkably helpful and very simple. Just archive the vault and then restore it on another (or the same) machine. I archived my Font Vault before wiping the hard drive on my Macbook Air in preparation for a clean install of Yosemite. Once I installed Suitcase Fusion in Yosemite, I was able to easily restore my prior configuration including all of my fonts.

Just be aware: both ends of this process can take several minutes depending on the number of fonts you have and you’ll want to allow some time for the file to sync to the cloud. 

Should you buy it?

If you’re using an earlier version of Suitcase and thinking of moving to a newer operating system, the upgrade is worth the price for compatibility alone. If you’re not using a font manager and have more than just the core system fonts installed, give Fusion a try. You’ll wonder how you lived without a professional font management solution.

Availability and pricing

Suitcase Fusion 6 is available for Mac and Windows for $119 and the license covers two machines on either platform or (like a Creative Cloud license) one of each. Upgrades are $59. A 30-day trial allows you to take it for test drive; something I recommend you do.