✦ Telugu Design ✦

Telugu shows box box in Photoshop?
Here is what is actually going on.

You paste Telugu onto a text layer, apply an ANU font, and get a row of empty rectangles. Nothing is broken and the font is fine. It is doing exactly what it was built to do — you are just feeding it the wrong thing.

What you pasted
కళ్యాణ వేదిక
→
What you saw
▯▯▯▯▯▯

Why it happens

ANU fonts were built before Unicode reached Telugu. They are symbol-encoded: the Telugu glyphs sit at the character slots normally used by A, B, C and the punctuation keys, not at the Unicode positions for Telugu letters.

So when you hand an ANU font a real Telugu letter like క, it looks in its own table, finds nothing at that position, and draws the "missing glyph" box. The same text in a normal Telugu font renders perfectly, which is why this feels like a font bug when it isn't.

The short version: ANU fonts do not read Telugu. They read a code that happens to look like Telugu once the font is applied. Your text has to be translated into that code first.

The fix, in three steps

  1. Paste your Unicode Telugu into the free converter.
  2. Hit Copy result. What you copy looks like nothing readable — that is correct.
  3. Paste it on your text layer, then apply any ANU font. The Telugu appears.

Order matters in After Effects

Paste the text first, then apply the font. If you set the font first, After Effects can reset the layer and you end up thinking it failed. Photoshop is not fussy about this; After Effects is.

You do not need the Word round trip

The usual workaround is to convert somewhere, paste into Word, apply an ANU font to check it, then copy into Photoshop. None of that is necessary. The converter previews the result in your own installed ANU font, so you can see it is right before you copy.

Working on a Mac?

ANU fonts frequently refuse to install on macOS at all, because they are old files with malformed internal tables. Rebuilding them is not the answer, and re-distributing them is not legal.

The better route is the opposite direction: convert the old ANU text back to Unicode Telugu. Once it is Unicode you can use any ordinary Telugu font, on any machine, on a phone, in WhatsApp, anywhere. The same converter does this — switch it to ANU → Telugu.

Telugu ⇄ ANU Converter

Free, no sign-up, nothing to install. Converts both directions, lets you type Telugu using English letters, and can read the text off a photo of an invitation card.

Open the tool

Questions people ask

Is the converter free?

The text conversion is free and runs entirely inside your browser — nothing is uploaded and it works with no internet. Reading a photo of a card uses an AI service and is capped per day.

Which ANU fonts does it work with?

All of them. Every ANU Telugu font shares the same underlying encoding, which is why you can switch between them in ANU Script Manager and the text still reads. One conversion works across the whole family.

Does it supply the fonts?

No. ANU fonts are commercial software owned by their publisher. This tool converts text only. You need the fonts already installed on your machine.

Can I type Telugu without a Telugu keyboard?

Yes. Turn on Type in English, get Telugu and type muhuurtam to get ముహూర్తం. Suggestions appear as you type; press space to take one.

Why does my text still look wrong in one font but right in another?

Some ANU fonts draw certain vowel marks in unusual ways — the ో mark in particular can read like ా in a few decorative faces. Switch the preview font in the tool to check. If it reads correctly in a plain font, the conversion is fine.