WhatTheFont

Have you come across a nice font in a magazine? Unless you're an expert, you'll have to guess at the name, and without a name, finding a font is practically impossible. This quickstart shows you how to easily identify a font using WhatTheFont.

1. Take photo

WhatTheFont recognizes fonts from images or pictures. Take a picture of the font whose name you want to find out with your camera or cell phone. The image does not necessarily have to be large, but it is important to photograph the letters as evenly as possible. Save the image as a jpg file on your desktop. Use MS Paint (or Photoshop) to crop the image. You can find Paint at Start, All programs, desk accessories, paint. Select the part where a word is most readable and choose crop. In older Windows versions, you can save the selection as a new image via the menu To process, Copy to. You don't need to make the letters completely freestanding, WhatTheFonts can distinguish the text from the background quite well.

Take a photo of the text whose font you want to recognize and crop the photo with Paint.

2. Recognize letters

Surf to Myfonts and open WhatTheFont. Click at Upload file on To leaf through and point to the photo taken in step 1. Confirm with Continue to send the photo to MyFonts.com. The site shows your image, with several cutouts of the letters underneath. You should find one letter in each box with an input box below it. Please indicate which letters you see to confirm identification. If one or more letters are not found, leave the corresponding box empty. If the entire image is recognized as one letter, there is something wrong with your photo. This also happens if too little is recognized or if too many letters are linked together. In this case, recreate the photo and crop. Confirm with Continue to proceed to.

WhatTheFont splits your image. Indicate which letters you recognize.

3. Download Fonts

WhatTheFont shows your image again. Below you will find an overview with one or more fonts that match the font on your photo. Click on the name of the font to get to the download link. The most common standard for font files is ttf (true type font). Many fonts are available for a fee. Use a good search in Google to find the fonts for free, for example download free ttf . Installing a font is easy. Download the font file to your desktop. If necessary, extract the zip file so that you can see the ttf files in Windows Explorer. Right click on the ttf file and choose to install. The font is now available in all Windows programs.