How to identify a font: 5 best services

When laying out a site, developing applications, and working on text documents, you must devote a lot of time to fonts. It’s good when the samples built into the program fully satisfy your needs. And if you saw the font in the picture somewhere and you liked it? How to understand what it is?

You need to use online services to determine the font from the picture. All that is required is to go to the site, upload the image and wait until it is processed. In our material, you will find a selection of the most convenient font recognition services.

How to determine the font from the picture

In terms of reference, the designer often has a clause that says that the specialist needs to choose a suitable font or find a specific one. The customer can express any wish:

• Adhere to the style of the Russian avant-garde.
• Make a font like that of a popular brand.
• Use the same as in the sent picture.

The most commonly used fonts, Arial or Times New Roman, are easily recognizable by the presence or absence of serifs. A special service can identify a rare and little-known font from a photo.

No super-effective site will help you recognize fonts, but there are several ways to recognize a font from an image.

There are special online tools developed to identify fonts. Sites work on the following principle: the program analyzes the text from the image or the description of the font and finds the most suitable one in its database; in addition, it offers several similar styles.

Each service has requirements for images, which are almost the same everywhere:

• Letters should be clear with a distinguishable outline.
• The required spacing is maintained between characters.
• Jpeg or png image format.
• Enlarging the photo does not degrade the quality. The resolution should be at least 600 dpi.

If all the requirements have been considered, the site will be able to determine the font in the file and give out font options that can be used for free.

Before you search for a font, you need to prepare a photo with the text: first, save the image to your device. The subsequent steps are almost always the same:

1. Add an image to the search field on the site and click “start.”
2. Specify the recognition area, especially when the photo has several different fonts.
3. Check out the results: often the service produces several options that resemble the fonts from the picture.
4. Copy the name of the font that seems most suitable to you. Some platforms allow you to download or buy the desired sample.

Five services for determining the font online from the picture

Fontspring.com

The site has a huge library of over 900,000 fonts, including paid and free ones. You can download or buy a sample directly on the Font Matcherator service.

The principle of operation is quite clear and intuitive: you need to add a file with a text or write the Internet address of the picture and start searching for the font. When you upload a photo, the service offers to crop it so that only the necessary fragment remains for recognition, without unnecessary details. In addition, Font Matcherator allows you to rotate the image in any direction using either 15° or 90° increments.

In the Fontspring store, which is the basis of the tool, you can find information about licenses and choose the most suitable format for work. In addition, the technical support helps users solve possible problems in working with the resource and gives recommendations on purchasing and installing fonts.

Positive qualities of the site:

• a large library of Cyrillic fonts;
• a clear and convenient list of license types and font prices;
• Most styles are available only after purchase, but some can be used for free;
• Font Squirrel web font converter;
• Font Talk forum, where discussions and font searches take place.

Identifont.com

This site is not designed to search for fonts, but it can help you recognize character styles. You will not be able to upload a photo with text to the resource, but you will be asked leading questions to help you recognize the font. The service will show certain letters, and you need to describe their visual features. The main thing here is that any person can answer the questions because you can choose using an example picture, which shows the differences.

If you know the name of a font, Identifont will help you find the most similar one. This feature is especially needed when the customer provides ready-made references, but you want the design to be unique. If you remember only part of the font name, the site can search by fragment, while it works not only with the first letters.

You won’t be able to purchase the font on the service, but it will offer you several sites that sell them. You can study the fonts in more detail and choose the most favorable purchase conditions.

Service characteristics:

• The search is carried out without the use of photographs: by description;
• Search function by a fragment of the name or the name of the creator of the font;
• library with character fonts;
• Provides several options for resources from the Internet from which you can download the style;
• To find the desired font, you need to have quite a few characters from it.

Whatfontis.com

The service is quite similar to the popular WhatTheFont. On it, users can identify a font from a photo and choose the appropriate option from a rather large library of more than 820,000 free and paid fonts.

For each request, the server returns 60 similar font samples. Information about this can be found in the description of the resource. In addition, there is a filter that can be configured to show only free options. Among them are both trial versions of fonts so that a person can familiarize themselves with them before purchasing, and completely free ones, which the site takes from the Google Fonts library. You can buy the desired font immediately on the service.

WhatFontIs interface is clear and logical. The first step is to copy the Internet address of the picture with text or the image itself by right-clicking on it. This feature is especially useful when the photo is stored in the messenger or search results. In addition, you can add a file from your computer using the browse by clicking the here button.

The site adjusts the image, so the font is well recognized, and the user can choose which option to use: the original or the modified one. If automatic inverting does not fully highlight the text, you can further edit it using the proposed functions: increase contrast and brightness, flip the image, and eliminate the noise.

You can use the standard functions of the site without registration. But authorization gives quite a lot of privileges:

• The user can save fonts to his favorites.
• He is given more options similar to the desired style.
• You can also enable the option of automatic character detection, in which you do not have to enter each character under the image yourself.

In addition, WhatFontIs has a paid subscription that provides even more features: a more accurate search, the ability to select free fonts from the Google Fonts library similar to paid options, disable advertisements, and a filter that will open to adjusting the cost and authors.

Resource characteristic:

• A function that allows you to add a photo using Copy & Paste;
• the ability to isolate letters in the handwritten text;
• wide image editing functionality to improve its quality and the final result;
• filter to search for free fonts;
• open source web font converter;
• A forum where users can help each other recognize an unusual font or discuss typography issues.

Instructions for using the site:

1. Open the service through the address https://www.whatfontis.com.
2. Click on “Browse”.
3. Select an image and click “Upload.”
4. When the text is on a dark background, you need to use the “Background color is darker” function.
5. Click on “Continue” to set the frame.
6. Next, you need to click “Use image” and complete the setup.
7. Get the result.

Rentafont.com

This server is slightly superior to other sites where you can determine the font from the text. And it’s better because it has many more search criteria, including category, shape, design, and more. Currently, the database stores 2.5 thousand fonts, including Cyrillic, so it is almost always possible to recognize the style. This service is well suited for those who work in Photoshop.

FontDetect

FontDetect is a desktop program that helps those who don’t know how to determine the name of a font. The difference of this resource is that it searches in the library of fonts on the computer. This option is especially useful for those with many styles installed, among which there are also paid ones.

There are situations when a customer wants to do new work in the design of previous projects, but they could get lost or remain only in the preview or bitmap format, and not everyone can remember which font was chosen for which work.

You do not need to install FontDetect on your computer – you only need to download the file from the site and unzip it. The program works so far only with Windows. After unpacking, it remains to do everything as is written in the manual, which can be found on the site or in the program itself. At first glance, the instructions may seem very complicated, but in fact, everything is very accessible, there is just a lot of information, and it is described in as much detail as possible.

The program has a clear interface, and the necessary steps that will help determine the font style are written above the toolbar. You can quickly understand the program and get the desired result if you do everything as indicated.

But in order for the program to work as efficiently as possible, you need to know some of the nuances. For example, as the practice has shown, this software, best of all, guesses a font written on a light background and one on a dark or contrasting one; it practically cannot recognize it at all. To solve this problem, the developers made it possible to change the background using “Invert.” The option is on the toolbar.

In addition, it is difficult for the program to recognize a handwritten font due to the connection of letters, so the developers have added the “Character Separator” option, with which you can independently set the boundaries of each letter.

In addition to internal functions, the program has a couple of add-ons: Linear Text and Circular. In the first one, you can straighten the text along a curve, and in the second, you can define characters scattered around the circle.

Program feature:

• compatible only with Windows;
• finds the desired font among those installed on the computer;
• there are unique options: “Invert,” “Character separator,” “Eraser”;
• defines Cyrillic.

The program may seem very unusual to some, but it can make life easier for designers and help them find the necessary font, among many others available on the computer. Besides, they don’t have to search and buy styles online. The desired font may already be installed, and you need to find it, which FontDetect can easily handle.

Now you know that identifying a font is easy, thanks to the services and programs that will help. Not all of them have a large base with various styles, but in extreme cases, you can ask real users for help by writing on the forum or in a group on social networks. Although it is now quite easy to find the necessary font, many designers still strive to create unique styles.

You can only take an idea from the references and examples provided by the customer and develop your own fonts based on them. Make the most of your imagination; even when a client wants a copy of a typeface, offer to use your design fonts.