Scanning and Tracing

There are several font-making tutorials online using Photoshop and Fontographer. The basic technique in these tutorials is creating a character with pen and paper, scanning the character then using software to trace the bitmap's outline. Tracing software is not perfect so some points on most characters need to be adjusted by hand before you generate the font. There is a faster way using Xara Xtreme orFontographer because their built-in tracing ability is superior to most tracing software. Bitmap Tracer in Xara Xtreme If you prefer to drawn your characters with pen and paper then scan themXara Xtreme has a built-in Bitmap Tracer. Open your bitmap in Xtreme then from the Utilities menu, choose Bitmap Tracer to open the Bitmap Tracer dialog box. We created a bitmap of the shape from the Drawing Technique tutorial and opened it in the Bitmap Tracer. Click the Trace button to use the default settings. You can make adjustments to the settings to fine tune each time clicking the Trace button to retrace the bitmap. We have found the following settings to be the best place to start: Monochrome, Remove noise 50, Minimum area 50, Accuracy 80 and Smoothing 15. See Tracing bitmaps and Bitmap Tracer Troubleshooterin the Xtreme help file for more information. In the image below our bitmap is on the left and Xtreme's trace results are on the right using the above settings. Once you are satisfied with the results click Insert. You may notice the results are not quite the same as the original bitmap and will need some work. To edit the trace you will need the Shape Editor Tool. Click the F4 key or select it from the toolbar on the left. See Shape Editor Tool in the Xtreme help file for more information. To show all points select the traced bitmap and click Arrange then Ungroup. After you have finished editing the traced bitmap click Arrange then Group. To export this shape as an EPS file from the menu click File then Export. In the Export file dialog box select Adobe Illustrator (*.ai;*.eps) as theSave as type. Choose a directory location and give your file a name including the .eps extension then click Export. AutoTracing in Fontographer Fontographer offers a similiar feature called AutoTracing with advanced options. To import bitmaps into Fontographer select the character space where you want to import your bitmap. Click File then Import then Bitmaps. In the Import Bitmaps dialog box change the List Files of Type to All Files (*.*). Locate the bitmap then click OK. Using Fontographer's internal tools you will need to edit the points as we did above in Xtreme. See the Fontographer manual for more information, this is available in PDF format from FontLab on the Fontographer page. VectorPaint Tools If you prefer to create your shapes directly into a font creation programFontLab Studio and TypeTool offer a VectorPaint Tools feature which is an unique set of tools that allow you to paint vector contours but look and feel like bitmap tools. You can choose brushes, pens and even enter text.