logo to font - hey bob, you reading?

ushere wrote on 9/22/2007, 10:48 PM
bob (farss) mentioned somewhere that it looked as if you could import a logo into ptt if you first made it a font?

if so,

what's the simplest way of converting an image to font?

leslie

Comments

farss wrote on 9/22/2007, 11:18 PM
"what's the simplest way of converting an image to font?"

If I knew the asnwer to that one I'd be a mighty happy chappy!

My thing was that Proanimator can do this sort of trick using an Illustrator file. The Illustrator file though has to be a closed surface, no shadows or other fancy stuff. Now by my reckoning that's what a font is, a set of vectors that describes a closed surface, sooo...

All we need is a way to create a wingding kind of font from a logo and we're away.

OR, Protype itself being enabled to read an Illustrator file.

Now having said all this, around 50% of the posts on the Proanimator forum are related to people having difficulty getting this feature to work in that app. I think the closed surface thingy is what throws people. Some of them are tracing bitmaps and not getting the surface closed and/or it's a 3D thing OR it's got more than just vectors in it.
So maybe the ProType developers looked at doing this and decided the feature could cause more grief than it was worth.

Bob.
Udi wrote on 9/23/2007, 1:36 AM
You can try FontCreator
http://www.high-logic.com/fontcreator.html

Udi
ushere wrote on 9/23/2007, 1:39 AM
bugger!
Grazie wrote on 9/23/2007, 2:14 AM
Udi?

I had a quick scan of the PDF. What caught my amateur legal eye was the limitations of the usage of the adaption of existing fonts. Hell's Teeth! And we thought the issues over copyright to do with audio and video was extensive! Appears that we can only adapt existing fonts IF they are to be used on THAT machine that they were adapted on.

Hmmmm...

Grazie
Udi wrote on 9/23/2007, 7:10 AM
You can create a new font, don't adapt existing one. So the lawyers blabla don't apply.
Note on fonts - they are B/W only (or foreground/background color).
Multicolor logos and pictures are a problem, unless you create multiple letters - one for each color and place the letters one on top the other.

Udi
DSCalef wrote on 9/23/2007, 8:10 AM
Try these links:

http://www.micrfonts.com/logo.htm

http://www.sigfont.com/Logos.htm

http://www.e-signature.com/en/prod02_en.htm
barleycorn wrote on 9/24/2007, 12:48 PM
We use FontLab but it's not a tool for amateurs.

FontLab's SigMaker 3 ($29.95) is probably your best bet.
kentwolf wrote on 9/25/2007, 1:01 AM
>>...can do this sort of trick using an Illustrator file...

Question: Is there a minium version of Illustrator that can be used?

For example, would Illustrator v. 1.0 work?

I was looking to get Illustrator for cheap because I would never use it other than ProAnimator and/or Red.

Thanks.
birdcat wrote on 9/25/2007, 4:43 AM
I know Corel Draw used to have this ability (output to a TTF).

Personally, I work at a company in the printing industry (large, very old company) and we use Fontographer for just about all of our font needs (other than purchasing, which we do on a regular basis, in addition to the 5,000 or so typefaces we have licensed).
barleycorn wrote on 9/25/2007, 1:16 PM
Why recommend a program that hasn't been updated in a decade and is not designed to work with NT, W2K, XP or Vista?

Fontographer is now owned by FontLab.
birdcat wrote on 9/26/2007, 10:09 AM
Which one?

I use Fontogapher (yes, it's an older version but works for my needs) under Win2K and Corel Draw under XP.

Both work really well for what I need them for.
john-beale wrote on 9/26/2007, 11:00 AM
WinXP already comes with a font editor called Eudcedit although I'm not sure how useful it is if you need high-quality glyphs. Still, you can't beat the price.

Try Start->Run...->eudcedit.exe

See also http://vlaurie.com/computers2/Articles/privchar.htm