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Fontlab Background object
Posted by Typogruffer in
7 Oct 2012 — 5:46am
7 Oct 2012 — 5:46am
Hey ,
While trying to create a glyph for a particularly tricky character( namely G), I faced infinite trouble as i can not get it to look just like my sketch. So i though i would scan it and place it as a BG image over which i can trace, but unfortunately when i am placing the scanned image(after increasing the contrast in PS) i am only getting a grey box with very little detail.
So, i was wondering if there is another way to make a template layer (Like illustrator: take a photo and dim it down and lock it) with the scanned image?
Regards
T
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7 Oct 2012 — 6:25am
I have encountered the same issue with FontLab and unable to adjust it to my liking (admittedly I did not try particularly hard) I usually end up doing the same work in Illustrator.
I have never used it but FontLab's tool ScanFont is supposed to do just what you need. Hopefully with the new tool being developed by the FontLab team something like this will exist within the main font editing application.
7 Oct 2012 — 5:56pm
FontLab's ScanFont will not work with any Mac OS after 10.6 and is NOT going to be upgraded in case you are on a Mac. I think they intend to integrate the product into FontLab Studio at some point but only the developers know when that might be.
8 Oct 2012 — 5:12am
You could live-trace in illustrator, give it a little clean-up of rogue points and drop that into fontlab as a mask (Cmd-M) and then draw it correctly.
Otherwise, FontLab seems to render raster backgrounds differently depending on the zoom level and resolution of the object.
8 Oct 2012 — 5:16am
In FontLab Studio you can increase the resolution of the bitmap layer by entering a higher number in Options → General options → EPS and bitmap background.
8 Oct 2012 — 8:43am
Leigh, font editors have historically been better than illustration programs at tracing.
hhp
8 Oct 2012 — 10:09am
@jens GENIUS.
@hrant - haha, I'm with you. I don't trust Illustrator to do anything but **** my shit up. It was only a method for Mr Gruff to get something to trace in Fontlab.
I'm really anal about these things...I even draw characters in fontlab:
See