Your friend’s birthday is approaching and, for the occasion, you have decided to make an amazing birthday card on the computer. You know everything: which image to use, which sentence to write … but you are still missing one fundamental thing: the writing font to use. If only you could use the same font in that image you saved on your PC … but what is it? How do you identify a font ? Don’t worry, I can give you a hand! Indeed, the online services that I am about to offer you in today’s guide can do it.
In the following lines, in fact, I will go to show you some online services thanks to which, in a simple and free way, you can easily identify a font included in an image or document. How do you say? Are you excited about it but not being very familiar with IT and new technologies you fear that the tools to identify a font I’m about to offer you are too difficult to use for you? But no, you absolutely don’t have to worry!
Contrary to appearances, identifying a font is not complicated at all. You just have to take five minutes of free time and put into practice the instructions that you find below: you will be able to do everything in a nutshell, promise!
Index
- How to identify a font from an image
- WhatTheFont
- What Font Is
- How to identify a font with Photoshop
- How to identify a font from PDF
- How to install identified fonts
How to identify a font from an image
Let’s start this discussion by seeing how to identify a font from an image using online services compatible with all major browsers . Choose the one that seems most suitable for you and use it by following the directions below.
WhatTheFont
One of the first online services I suggest you use, if you want to identify a font, is WhatTheFont . It is an excellent tool that can be used directly from the browser that allows you to find out which writing character has been used in an image in no more than five minutes.
The service allows you to find fonts by analyzing images in PNG or JPG format with a maximum size of 2 MB. To use it, simply select the image to be analyzed, follow a very quick wizard and that’s it. Do not you believe it? Try it yourself.
The first thing you need to do to identify a font with WhatTheFont is, therefore, connect to the main page of the service and drag the image containing the writing from which to trace the font into the appropriate box; or you can click on the wording or click here to upload to upload image and select the file “manually”.
Once this is done, use the WhatTheFont editor to select the word to use for the font search and, when you are ready to do so, click on the blue button with the arrow pointing to the right . After a few moments, a new page will open containing all the possible fonts compatible with the image you have uploaded: try to find the right one, comparing the characters of the “original” image with those of the various written proposals.
If you should be able to identify the font you are interested in, you can even download or purchase it (if it is not free), by pressing the Get it button and following the instructions that appear on the screen to install it locally.
Please note that the service is also available as an app for Android and iOS / iPadOS . If you want to try to identify fonts by acting as a smartphone and tablet, the use of this app is certainly preferable to that of the Web version of WhatTheFont.
What Font Is
What Font Is is an online service for identifying fonts from images that can be used directly from the browser. Basically it’s free, but I would like to point out the possibility of subscribing to a subscription of 39.99 euros / year to take advantage of advanced functions that allow you to identify more precisely the writing characters, eliminate advertising, automatically fill in the boxes relating to the recognition of single characters and so on.
To identify a font with What Font Is, the first thing you need to do is connect to the main page of the service . Then, drag the image containing the font you are interested in to find in the Drag & Drop your image here to identify your font! , or click on the browse link by clicking here to select it “manually”. And if the font is contained in an image taken from the Internet, you can directly copy and paste the URL of the same in the field specify a URL instead .
Then, click on the red Find the font button and crop the image using the What Font Is editor, so that the word or phrase containing the font of your interest is highlighted. Once this is done, click on the Next step button and, if necessary, adjust contrast, brightness and other image parameters, using the appropriate adjustment bars located on the left (so that the scanner of the service can correctly read the font) , then click again on the Next step button .
Now, observe the various images proposed and report the corresponding letter in the field below, distinguishing capital and small letters (for example, if the letter M is highlighted in the image , in the text field below you must write the M ; if the character m is highlighted , you have to write m and so on). Once this is done, click again on the Next step button and, in the new page opened you will be shown a list of very similar characters, which may coincide with those used in your image (the list is found below).
To check which of the fonts proposed is really what you are looking for, click on the names of the various characters: in this way you will be able to see a complete preview with all the letters. To proceed with the download or the eventual purchase of a font, presses the item Download present in correspondence with its name-
How to identify a font with Photoshop
Are you working on a Photoshop project ? Well, in this case, know that you can take advantage of an integrated “standard” function in the famous Adobe program to be able to identify a writing character. The function in question works very well and, from the tests I have carried out, it seems to be even more accurate than the online services mentioned above.
How to use? After having imported the image containing the character to be identified into Photoshop (by dragging it into the main program window or by selecting it manually via the File> Open menu ), open the Text menu at the top and click on Find similar font .
Once this is done, click on the Find similar font button in the window of the same name that appears in the center of the screen and, if necessary, move the box to the word of your interest in the image opened in Photoshop.
As you can see, you will be offered a list of fonts similar to those “read” by the Photoshop scanner and you can eventually download some (if they are available in the Adobe library) by clicking on the bubble symbol . Convenient, right?
How to identify a font from PDF
Are you going to identify a font from PDF ? Well, it is also possible to do this using special online services. If you have to act on a document containing information of some importance, however, it is better to opt for another solution. Which? Take a screenshot of the word or phrase contained in the PDF of your interest and upload the image obtained in one of the services mentioned in the previous chapters , in order to avoid potential privacy problems.
If, on the other hand, you have to act on PDF files that do not contain confidential information, you can use the online services I mentioned: functioning in a similar way to the tools for identifying fonts from images that I have already spoken to you extensively.
One of the best useful services for this is ExtractPDF.com , which is free and very easy to use. In addition to identifying fonts from PDFs, it allows you to locate images, text and metadata, which makes it useful for other purposes as well.
To use it, go to its main page and click on the Choose file button to select the document of your interest (taking into account that files with a maximum size of 25 MB are accepted), or paste the URL in the text field Or enter a URL .
Once the upload is complete, click on the Start button and wait for the PDF to be processed. At the end of this phase, click on the Fonts tab and take note of the fonts that have been identified by the service algorithm. If you want, you can also download them in .ttf format , by clicking on one of the links that may be available. Simple, right?
How to install identified fonts
Have you finally managed to identify the font present in that given image and now would you like to use it for your projects? Well, in that case you have to download it first, then you have to install it on your PC. How you do it? I’ll explain it to you right away.
To download a specific font, take note of its name and search for it using the sites I suggested in my tutorial on how to download fonts . Once you have downloaded the font on your computer, be it Windows PC or Mac, you can proceed with the installation of the same, so that you can use it as you see fit, by copying it in the Windows Fonts folder or in the MacOS Font Book .
To find out in more detail how to install a font on your computer, just follow the instructions I gave you in my guide on how to install fonts .
