Does anyone know if there is a way that you can scan a sample of your own handwriting (writing out each character one at a time) and then convert each written character to be built into a TrueType font? I would like to have some way of simulating my own handwriting (sloppy as it is) by typing something in Word and then printing it using my own customized font. I have tried to look up “handwriting” and “font” or “custom” and “font” in Google, and I have checked download.com and Tucows for the same things. There are plenty of hits for obtaining fonts already made that look like (someone else’s) handwriting, and a few font editors have turned up, but I haven’t seen something that explicitly describes doing what I want it to do. If anyone knows where I can obtain software that will do this please provide some links I can look up.
Yeah, you can do it with CorelDRAW and a scanner. I did it with my partner’s handwriting. It’s a true PITA, so be sure you really want it.
My post got eaten. Here’s a short version:
There are companies that will make a font for you. You submit a written form of some sort and for a fee, they’ll take the characters you wrote and transform them into a font. Prices (and I imagine quality) for this service can vary, so shop around.
If you’re doing a Google search, try “handwriting own font”, sans quotation marks.
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- Tucows does have one that does it: High-Logic’s Font Creator. It’s not quite totally automatic: what it does is it has a feature that converts bitmap 2-color (B&W) images to vector glyphs. It used to work on the trial version, but the last time I downloaded it, that particular feature didn’t. It’s rather low-resolution, the bitmap limit is 200x200 pixels. As I remember, the auto-converted glyphs didn’t look so hot. But it’s a good start, and you can fix them up easily, it just takes time. And you can still do it totally manually, that just takes more time. Search for font forums for help… Font Creator doesn’t allow hinting (characters look lousy on-screen, but do print perfectly) or vector image importing either, but it’s only $40 and Fontlab and Fontographer are $400 and $350, respectively.
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- Tucows does have one that does it: High-Logic’s Font Creator. It’s not quite totally automatic: what it does is it has a feature that converts bitmap 2-color (B&W) images to vector glyphs. It used to work on the trial version, but the last time I downloaded it, that particular feature didn’t. It’s rather low-resolution, the bitmap limit is 200x200 pixels. As I remember, the auto-converted glyphs didn’t look so hot. But it’s a good start, and you can fix them up easily, it just takes time. And you can still do it totally manually, that just takes more time. Search for font forums for help… Font Creator doesn’t allow hinting (characters look lousy on-screen, but do print perfectly) or vector image importing either, but it’s only $40 and Fontlab and Fontographer are $400 and $350, respectively.
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I have done it, and it truely is a PITA. It’s really good fun for like the first hmm 4 letters. After that its just a plague 
Fontographer is the most amazingly crap piece of software from a reknowned company I have ever used. I just can’t understand how this software is so incredibly user-hostile. It is probably great when you get good at it, but compared to other softwares the “sit-right-down-and-click” learning curve is almost non-existant.
The results vary, they can be anything from unrecognisably crap to really quite good, but to get to the really quite good standard you need to put in a lot, a lot, of work. Best of luck!
A hint for faster results is to use a stylus (mouse-pen) to draw the letters right into either illustrator or freehand or coraldraw. Even flash5 gives good results when you can transform the shapes to paths. Then just paste them into your fontmaker. Another hint is to do two scans. One where you have just written quite a long paragraph, so that you get the “flow” up, and one where you have used squared paper, and written out each letter one-by-one. The long paragraph will be a lifesaver, since at some stage you are going to say “goddam thats an ugly lower case r” and want to do one that looks nicer. Then you can pick from the paragraph.
Iteki - runs off to write something in her own font which is comprised of about 16 letters…
Forgot to mention, here is a company that do it:
http://www.mytruetype.com/mytt/en/welcome.asp
The site is closing, but there are a lot of good hints and tips in their FAQ, and somewhere they might still have the forms available for download. The forms had a grid with all the letters etc, and stuff. Kind of a “quick start”.
briefly de-lurks
I was looking for the same thing when I stumbled upon software called Your Handwriting 2.0.. There is a review of the software here.
I can’t vouch for the software since I haven’t tried it yet. Since the price is right (under $20) I’m thinking of giving it a whirl, though.
scurries back to lurkdom
As a professional programmer who has been working with TrueType for the past couple months, I can assure you that programs like Fontographer are hostile toward users mainly because TrueType is hostile toward programmers. We just want to pass the suffering along to you, the end-user.
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- By the by, if you’re new at the font business, don’t start from scratch: it’s much faster and easier to just download any font off the web and modify the namings, characters and metrics as you need. Don’t bother with creating an entire font file of your own from scratch.
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- By the by, if you’re new at the font business, don’t start from scratch: it’s much faster and easier to just download any font off the web and modify the namings, characters and metrics as you need. Don’t bother with creating an entire font file of your own from scratch.
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