Font Creators

boofredlay

What are some good options for font creation? Specifically for handwriting and / or drawings to be scanned into a font type. Paid for or free programs.
Which ones have you used? Pros and Cons would help too.

Thanks in advance.

driven

I played around with this one a few years ago, http://www.photofont.com/photofont/bitfonter/
but didn't get that job I needed it for...

I have been thinking of using 'Layout' to create a font recently

john

Pixero

There is ifontmaker if you have an ipad.

boofredlay

Thanks guys, I will check those out.

Chris Fullmer

I've made a font using bitfonter before. It was pretty easy to do.

Illustrator also has the ability to do so, if you are comfortable with that software.

boofredlay

Thanks Chris. I wish I was comfortable with Illustrator. I have never used it.

Frederik

In the past I've used FontCreator with great success...
We have some extra characters in Denmark/Scandinavia (i.e. Æ, Ø, Å), which often isn't present when downloading fonts (in particular handwriting fonts) from i.e. Dafont.com

Haven't needed it for a long time though and haven't installed it on my new laptop, but I was quite happy with it...

driven

I downloaded 'birdfont' [ open source, cross platform app ] last night, to see if it can be used with 'Layout' [instead of 'Illustrator']

john

boofredlay

Glad to know you had success with it Kim. I appreciate it.

Let us know how birdfont works out driven.

Richard

I think the problem with most font making applications is the limitation of their scripting for kerning! They seem to generally do a fairly poor job. You can straight away see the problems with many free fonts.

That said I think Layout's engine has problems reading font scripts. To see this open any application and type a few words then do the same with layout and you will note the difference.

Could be enhanced if layout had "optical" kerning and not just "metrics".