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In-depth: WhatTheFont

“No more guessing whether that ad you saw uses Desdemona or Funky Fresh.” -- MacWorld, March 2001

Ever wanted to have a font just like the one used by certain publications, corporations, or ad campaigns? Well now you can, using the WhatTheFont font recognition system.

Developed in conjunction with the University of Birmingham in England, the system accepts image files uploaded by you, then analyzes them and finds the closest match on our site. Images can be color or black & white, and they don't have to be very high quality (although that helps). Even a digital photograph of some lettering you like can be accepted. Accuracy of results is unprecedented by previous automatic systems. Try it and see!

In the March 2001 issue, MacWorld reported: “For fonts, look no further than MyFonts.com (www.myfonts.com). It offers links to all of the major foundries, and it also identifies fonts you've scanned and uploaded - no more guessing whether that ad you saw uses Desdemona or Funky Fresh.”

• WhatTheFont supports most common image formats, for example GIF, JPEG, TIFF, BMP. The maximum image size is around 360 x 275 pixels. You may upload images with a greater width and lower height.

• In the upload file dialog box, select files of type *.*

• The ideal letter height for the best search result is about 100 pixels. The minimum letter height is 40 pixels. Larger letters increase search time.

• Try to get the text horizontal.

• WhatTheFont only requires a few letters of the alphabet to identify the font. More letters will only increase search time, not search accuracy. Try to submit just one example of each character. Duplicate characters only increase search time. Do not try to scan an entire page of letters. Your search will either be rejected, or your web browser will timeout before the search is complete.

• Make sure letters are not touching. All touching letters will be treated as a single letter.

• WhatTheFont will only recognize uppercase and lowercase letters. Other objects on the image (e.g. numbers) will either be rejected, or confused with valid characters.

• WhatTheFont can accept color, gray-scale and black-and-white images. The letters can be dark on light, or light on dark. Try setting your scanner to sample in gray-scale to reduce upload time. Avoid scanning in just black-and-white.

Example Image

This is an ideal scanned image for WhatTheFont. The characters are about 100 pixels in height and the baseline is horizontal. Click on it to upload the image to WhatTheFont.

If you have any queries or comments about WhatTheFont or have any difficulties, please contact us.

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