WhatTheFont

admin — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 23:27:12 +0000

WhatTheFont is a free online font identification web form available at MyFonts.com (http://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/). It is the best, most reliable font identification tool that I have found. The way it works is that you upload an image file with a sample of the font you want to identify. Then it runs a character recognition script on the sample where it identifies each letter. You will be sent to a screen where you can make adjustments in case of an error. You can also re-combine compound shapes that have become separated – such as the dot over the lower case “i” or “j” or the dot under the question mark or exclamation point. The screen allows you to drag and drop the separated part over the character it has been separated from and re-combine the compound shape. When you are finished making adjustments, simply press the “Search” button and it will send you to a search results page with a list of candidates for the font.

WhatTheFont supports most common image file formats such as BMP, TIFF, JPEG, PNG, GIF, etc. The website offers tips for getting a good result, such as the maximum size of the uploaded image and the optimum number of pixels for the letter height.

The results are very impressive. Even with a low resolution sample, if it is upsampled in Photoshop and steps are taken to create a clean image, the results can be spot on. You can use Photoshop to clean up the image by converting all the characters to black and white and adjusting the brightness and contrast to get nice, dark letters. Then you can go to the trouble to make sure each letter is separated by a little space.

I have used this tool over and over and it has saved me a ton of time looking through specimen sheets trying to find that font that I just know, but can’t remember the name.

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Font Design » Font Identification

WhatTheFont