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RSSFree Font Identification Tool: What The Font?
If you’ve ever tried to make a graphic parody of something, you know that using the right font can mean the difference between a something that works and something that doesn’t. When I wanted to do a parody of the Choose Your Own Adventure books, I spent some time googling before finding a font identification tool called “What the Font?”.
Basically, you take a screenshot of a couple of words from the font you’re trying to identify and upload the picture to What The Font. Within seconds, it suggests several fonts that it thinks are close matches.
There are two drawbacks to the system:
- It seems to fail miserably when letters touch, meaning cursive fonts are beyond its abilities, and
- I’ve never seen it return any free fonts. Every font that it suggested was sold by myfonts.com.
The site easily identified the Choose Your Own Adventure font, and was able to pick up a minor detail that identified Despair.com’s demotivational posters as being in Caslon 3 Roman and not Times New Roman.
On the other hand, it failed miserably when I tried to identify the fonts in the headers of several sites including Just A Wee Bit Closer, CO-OB, The Learned Fangirl, and Savage Chickens.
So, the system isn’t perfect, but might at least get you moving in the right direction when you’re trying to find a specific font and don’t know where to start.
Check it out here: What The Font?
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November 5th, 2008 at 8:54 am
Wow, this would have come in handy on so many occasions!
If you’re truly curious, it’s Burton’s Nightmare
November 5th, 2008 at 11:14 am
To your two points about draw backs:
1. I’ve had luck with slicing the letters apart in an image editor. Though you are right script type doesn’t do as well as regular type.
2. Part of the problem here is you might not be trying to identify a free font. If you were I’m sure it would come up with something.
But yea What the font is a great tool.
December 19th, 2008 at 10:47 pm
Can you give me the name of the choose your own adventure font, please? I need just that font!
December 28th, 2008 at 9:33 am
I love What the Font tool, and I think of it first when I need to identify a font. When it falls through, though, don’t underestimate the power of the WhatTheFont Forum!
There, you post your image to a page, and user-enthusiasts ID your font personally. I rarely have to wait for more than half an hour for a positive ID. It makes me wonder where these folks find all that spare time, but I am very, VERY grateful they spend a little of it on me!
January 16th, 2009 at 10:06 am
It sure is handy. Although often the font I’m trying to identify is some free font and if there’s no commercial equivalent for the font, it’s useless.
And even in the occasion that the tool doesn’t help, you can post it there for actual people to analyze. And they’re pretty good.
January 16th, 2009 at 10:11 am
Oh, forgot: Just make it try to identify some normal font like Arial, it sure doesn’t suggest Arial. Just some pricy fonts.
November 2nd, 2009 at 6:44 pm
So I can see by the comments that I’m not the only one looking for this font.
I not only ID’ed it, but I found it for free:
http://www.free-fonts-ttf.org/true-type-fonts/ag-benguiat-218-download.htm