Font recognition software....

[gROUND cHUCK]

I've been searching for font recognition software for quite some time now and found a few that I thought I would share.

The first is Imagaro Z: http://www.imagaro.com/Overview/Overview.htm
It's a pretty cool program that vectorizes the artwork and if there is text,
the program will try to find it even if the font is stretched. Pretty cool.
They also have a sign program http://www.conclipse.com/ It's not the best but it looks like it will do the job.

This one has been mentioned a few times here already but I like the way it works.
FontExpert 3.0 http://www.fontexpert.com/english.htm

Another one that matches bitmap text to the closest font in your system is FontMatch http://www.stretchedout.com/products/fontmatch/fontmatch.php
It works alright but if you don't have the right font installed then it goes to the next best one rather then giving some closer suggestions like the other programs.

Also some of the new programs by Corel, Adobe, and Lotus have been using the PANOSE http://www.w3.org/Printing/stevahn.html matching system.
Which matches fonts based on a
stored number in the font itself. So it will only match fonts from a font itself and not from a scanned image.

This is what I've got so far. If anyone has others, I would love to hear about them.

Or if someone knows of a font sorting program, that sorts by the style of the font based on its shape and nodes, and not the stored info. (most fonts don't have the style info stored in them.) I would also love to hear about it.

I know I could sort my fonts in FontExpert 2006 (no relation to the other Font Expert) but that's only one at a time and it takes to long to sort 5 to 7 thousand fonts, one at a time.

 

[Fred Weiss]

I sorted 5000 fonts into groups to my liking in about 4 hours with Typograf.

For font recognition, it really comes down to FontExpert and Imagaro Z (which costs about 5 times more. Each has benefits and drawbacks.

Imagaro Z works only with those fonts they have catalogued. You cannot add in any fonts of your own. It will not substitute fonts automatically unless you have the correct legal version according to them.

FontExpert works with both the fonts they have catalogued and any you want to add in. It does not compensate for modifications such as condensing or stretching. When one needs to do this it is easy to do in Photoshop and i do it all the time. In fact I regularly identify type by rotating individual letters that have been arched or distorted, by reversing slants and by expanding or condensing.

In fairness, typeface identification is not for a lot of people who have no real knowledge of type in general or who the players are or were at one time. It is however, invaluable for the professional wishing to produce customer pleasing work. Like most things worth knowing, you don't just buy into it ... you go through a learning curve.

My opinion is that FontExpert coupled with Typograf, Photoshop and an organized archive of your own fonts is the way to go.