How to Enable OpenType Features in Word, Photoshop, and Illustrator: A Complete Guide

As a graphic designer, you already know that typography can make or break a project. But if you’re only using the default letters in your premium fonts, you are leaving a massive amount of typographic potential on the table.

OpenType fonts (.otf) come packed with hidden gems: elegant swashes, beautifully linked ligatures, true small caps, and stylistic alternates that can instantly elevate a design from “standard” to “bespoke.” However, these features aren’t always turned on by default.

Whether you’re drafting a formal document, designing a hero image, or laying out a brand identity, knowing how to access these typographic features is essential. In this guide, I’ll walk you through exactly how to unlock and enable OpenType features across Microsoft Word, Adobe Photoshop, and Adobe Illustrator.

What Are OpenType Features?

Before we dive into the software, let’s establish exactly what we are unlocking. OpenType is a font format developed jointly by Adobe and Microsoft. Unlike older TrueType (.ttf) fonts, OpenType allows type designers to embed thousands of extra characters (glyphs) and programmed behaviors into a single font file.

The most common OpenType features you’ll want to use include:

• Standard Ligatures (liga): Designed to fix awkward visual collisions between specific character combinations, such as “fi,” “fl,” or “ff”.
• Contextual Alternates (calt): A dynamic feature that modifies a glyph based on its surrounding letters, ensuring natural connections in script fonts or preventing repeating characters from looking perfectly identical.
• Swashes (swsh): Decorative flourishes and extended strokes typically added to the beginning or end of words.
• Stylistic Sets (ss01-ss20): Predefined groups of alternate characters that change the overall personality of the font, such as switching a double-story ‘a’ to a single-story ‘a’.
• Old-Style Figures (onum): Numerals designed with varying heights and descenders to blend seamlessly into lowercase body text.

How to Enable OpenType Features in Microsoft Word

Step-by-Step Guide for Word:

1. Select your text: Highlight the text you want to modify.
2. Open the Font Dialog Box: Press Ctrl + D (Windows) or Cmd + D (Mac) to quickly open the Font dialog box. Alternatively, right-click the text and select Font, or click the expander arrow in the Home tab’s Font group.
3. Navigate to the Advanced Tab: Click on the Advanced tab at the top of the dialog box.
4. Adjust OpenType Settings: In the “OpenType Features” or “Advanced Typography” section, you will find dropdowns to enable:
   • Ligatures: Change from “None” to “All” or “Standard and Contextual”.
   • Number Forms: Choose “Old-Style” for body text or “Lining” for standard math and caps or you can just set to “Default”
   • Stylistic Sets: Choose from available numbered sets depending on what the font designer included.
   • Contextual Alternates: Check the box to enable this feature.
5. Apply: Click OK.

Expert Troubleshooting Tip: OpenType features in Word will be grayed out or fail to work if your document is saved in the older “Compatibility Mode” (.doc). You must save your document in the modern .docx format for Stylistic Sets and Ligatures to function. Additionally, checking the “Kerning for fonts” box at 1 point and above will ensure optimal spacing.

How to Enable OpenType Features in Adobe Photoshop

Photoshop offers granular, interactive control over typography, providing multiple ways to access OpenType features.

Method 1: The Character Panel (Global Control)

1. Open the Character Panel by navigating to Window > Character.
2. Highlight your text.
3. At the bottom of the Character panel, you will see a row of icons representing OpenType features (Standard Ligatures, Contextual Alternates, Swash, etc.). If an icon is bold, the font supports it; if it is grayed out, the font does not.
4. Click the icons to toggle features on and off. You can also access these via the panel’s top-right hamburger menu under the OpenType submenu.

Method 2: On-Canvas Glyph Alternatives (Interactive Control) Photoshop allows you to edit glyphs directly on your canvas without opening menus.

1. Ensure this is enabled by going to Edit > Preferences > Type (Windows) or Photoshop > Preferences > Type (Mac) and checking “Enable Type layer glyph alternates”.
2. Highlight a single character on your canvas. A small grid will pop up below the letter showing available stylistic alternates.
3. Click the alternate you prefer to instantly replace it.

Method 3: The Glyphs Panel (Exhaustive Control) If you need to find a specific ornament or alternate character, go to Window > Glyphs. This panel displays every single glyph embedded in the .otf file, allowing you to double-click any shape to insert it into your text.

Watch the tutorial here.

How to Enable OpenType Features in Adobe Illustrator

As a vector-based program built for professional branding and logo design, Illustrator provides the most comprehensive typographic control in the Adobe Creative Cloud suite.

Method 1: The Dedicated OpenType Panel Unlike Photoshop, Illustrator separates its OpenType features into a dedicated panel.

1. Go to Window > Type > OpenType.
2. Select your text block.
3. Use the icons at the bottom of the panel to toggle features like Discretionary Ligatures, Titling Alternates, and Fractions. Expert Tip: Contextual Alternates are sometimes turned off by default in Illustrator. It is highly recommended to click the “Contextual Alternates” icon (the italic ‘O’) to ensure script fonts connect beautifully and behave as the font designer intended.

Method 2: The Touch Type Tool For highly customized typography (like logo design), use the Touch Type Tool (Shift + T). This allows you to select a single letter and manipulate its scale, rotation, and position non-destructively. While a letter is selected, a mini-menu will appear showing up to five alternate glyphs for quick swapping.

Method 3: The Glyphs Panel Go to Window > Type > Glyphs to open the panel. To easily navigate a font with thousands of characters, highlight a letter in your artwork and change the panel’s “Show” dropdown from “Entire Font” to “Alternates for Current Selection”. This filters the view to only show the swashes and alternates available for that specific letter.

Watch the tutorial here.

Bonus: How to Use OpenType Features in Non-Supported Software

What if you are using software like Silhouette Studio, basic web editors, or Canva, which have limited or no OpenType support?

You can still access swashes and alternates if the font is PUA (Private Use Area) Encoded. PUA encoding assigns a permanent Unicode value to special characters so they act like standard symbols.

• On Windows: Open the native Character Map app, check “Advanced View,” group by “Unicode Subrange,” select “Private Use Characters,” and copy/paste your desired swash into your software.
• On Mac: Open the Font Book app, navigate to Preview > Repertoire, copy the alternate character (Cmd + C), and paste it into your desired program.

By utilizing these panels and settings in Word, Photoshop, and Illustrator, you transform fonts from static alphabets into dynamic, programmable design tools, ensuring your typography is always polished, professional, and highly customized.

Premium Fonts from Vampfonts with OpenType Support

At Vampfonts, we specialize in Premium OpenType Fonts—typeface collections engineered to give designers more than just a set of letters, but a complete creative toolkit. Most of our fonts include OpenType files, allowing designers to maximize advanced features and elevate their projects far beyond the limits of standard typography.

Below our best premium fonts with OpenType support

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