Anyone know if there is a way to turn letter brushes into fonts

Very impressive! I think Rod knows a way to use inkscape to create a svg, then render the font in Font Factory. He'll have to give you the low down.

Yes you can do it in Inkscape.You will however have to convert the PNG image into an SVG file first.
step 1) create your brush image
step 2) open in inkscape and trace it into an SVG
step 3) save the svg file
step 4) follow the video tutorial below


Online font converter (free)
http://onlinefontconverter.com/

Fontstarter.svg file
http://www.box.net/shared/ohvifhn2ox

Website
http://cleversomeday.wordpress.com/2010 ... ape-dings/

PDF download
http://cleversomeday.files.wordpress.co ... ngbats.pdf

I turned it into an True Type Font.It didn't turn out all that great because it has many paths but it is complete.Although i somehow lost the cap T and had to create a new one.
It is attached here.

Example type


You will find it listed as Fancy_Rod in your font list

I'm not sure what happened but this is what I get. The C doesn't show up and the letters are random sizes. This was done in all caps. The real kicker is check out the settings for horizontal and vertical spacing in the text dialog!

Yes i know it is because they have spirals on them.Inkscape sees them as the same height but that height includes the spiraly things coming off the letters.
I have no idea what happened to the C
The best way to use the font will be one letter at a time.

What would probably work best is to just create one letter at a time and transfer it to Inkscape - trace it and then create a font with just the one letter.That or cut the bottom off every letter.That would kind of kill the cool look of the font though.

Another thing I noticed that was kind of weird. When I was putting these in my files, I was trying to rename them with letters instead of just numbers so I could tell which was which in the folder. When I tried to change the file name, the image of the letter itself changed case and appeared differently, ie, changed from lower case to upper case. Weirdness? Go figure...

It looks like it would take a LOT of work to convert those characters into a font. They have a lot of detail. Then there is the issue of the shading inside the characters. I don't recall ever seeing a gray-scaled font. Usually fonts are just solid black. I've seen some fonts that appear to have gray, but that was done with very fine lines/pixels - and the resulting font file was very large and slow to render. Plus those brushes have a shadow/glow around the characters, something that is usually done after the font is rendered.

Well, there is always photofonts: http://www.photofont.com/

-Rob A>

Did works with gimp ? or may install photophont system wide ?

I corrected the link so it takes you directly to the dl page for the Adobe plugin.
http://www.fontlab.com/photofont/photofont-start/

I will try and see if i can get it to work through Gimp>Shellout>Xnview, or just through Gimp.
Thanks Rob!
Cool find.

In windows the default install is into common files/adobe/plugins/filters
copy everything in there to another directory and point PSPI to it , and it works quite nicely through Gimp.
Just create a new doc - create a new layer (transparent one).. Select that layer and run the plugin.
Select a type of photofont you like there are several (shown in the image below).
Select a size click ok and there you go.






I suppose you could also just copy the 8bf file into Xnviews plug-ins folder and it will work through Shellout also.

Note that the first two images i had a text layer.This isn't necessary.

Thanks Rod; works great with PSPI. Now I need to find me some more free photo fonts. lol

I will do the same.
I actually looked at one of the PHF files in Notepad ++ and the images seem to be embedded in the code.Strange.
I really do not want to shell out 499 dollars for the software that creates this file extension though.
I will keep a lookout for new photofonts and share them when i find more.I definitely would not be letting them go for free though if i had to spend that much money creating them. I doubt we will find many free ones to install.

I kind of wonder if it is possible to take a PHF place it in a dedicated directory, replace those embedded image names with one that could be added to that folder and have it use that image instead?
I am not sure how that would work with installing it through the 8bf software though.

I saw bitfonter too Rod; no way. lol

Did download some hirez versions of the fonts that came with the intaller you linked as well as a few more fonts. Only did a rudimentary search otherwise, but have not come across any more. Looked at Sourceforge, but couldn't find a photo font program there either (and probably it will not be done due to copyright stuff).

I agree.I am now trying to find a free font editor that saves the phf format.
On another note i am trying to figure out how to change the brushes into a phf install.

the specification of the format seems free and based on open standard


but the link http://www.photofont.com/documentation/ is dead, i didn't try to resurrect the link, maybe is cached on the internet archives

i try to make a search but seems are several different format called phf

1 http://filext.com/file-extension/PHF
...The PHF file type is primarily associated with 'Photofont' by Fontlab Ltd.. Think of a Photofont as a collection of bitmap (PNG) images that use RGB color, loss-less compression, alpha transparency, and an XML attached tag. This collection works like a font, so you can press a key and get a certain image from the collection. You can create a Photofont with a text editor and a graphics program capable of exporting PNG files.

2 http://www.greywyvern.com/code/php/phf-demo
apparently talking of different phf files

3 Photon Font Files ( still font file but maybe not the same format even if synonymous)
http://qnx4.narod.ru/qnx.al.ru/docs/prog1.htm

4 no much luck with free converter this convert .dbf font(???) in phf (Photon) font
http://www.qnx.com/developers/docs/qnx_ ... 2_phf.html

I think i got the font converted the best i can.I created each letter and number as a single png file and imported them one at a time into Inkscape.I then converted them to a svg file and converted that into a usable font.
Fancy_Rod-2 attached.



If you installed the previous Fancy_Rod font, You will have to remove font-3933 and install this one.You will find it in your list as Fancy_Rod-2
Image example - the lower case z is kind of funny still.



A closer look -