What The Font; Identify Fonts With The iPhone
March 25, 2009 by Ryan Ray
This is a post for all of us folks out there who are visual thinkers/learners. If you are a designer you’ll love this app. There’s been a big buzz for this app over the last month or so, and for good reason the app is awesome. This app is free and does a simple task, yet it has been very useful for me in the last few months. It’s called WhatTheFont, and as the name implies it will identify fonts or typefaces if you want to be one of those “I’m too good to call them fonts, I’m a real designer” people. Simple use your iPhones camera and snap a picture of the font or fonts you are trying to identify. If you are still a little confused or want some proof then let me walk you through the app itself.
Once you’ve opened up WhatTheFont, you are greeted with a blue screen and two options; Take a new photo or use a saved photo. Pretty self explanatory here, if you have a photo saved in your photo library use it if not take a new one!
Obviously when taking your picture make sure you have a well lit shot and most of the font in the picture, line up your shot and take it. From there there is a series of cropping steps to get the font centered and pulled in tighter for it to identify the fonts used. To crop you simply use one finger and stretch a box around your text. You can easily reposition the box with one finger as well. For demonstration purposes of how well it works, I’m not even using a printed item. This is indented font in this little rock cross.
From there the software starts identifying letters of the fonts. If it has two letters of the same font you can combine them with a pinch gesture, and you can also assist it/correct it with the right letter in the box to the right as shown by my screenshot below. This is the time consuming part if you want to get real anal about the right fonts. I was a little worried at these pictures because they really didn’t point out individual letters, so I just hit identify.
Once you tap identify you are given all of the possible fonts WhatTheFont thinks is used in the picture. Luckily it calmed my worries and was correct in identifying the fonts used on the cross. It is very helpful though to get EXACT matches to fill out every letter and delete ones that aren’t letters as sometimes it may identify the top of an I or something weird such as that. Also it definitely works better on items that have been printed on paper not into rock or what have you. Just some suggestions for you
Like I said, this app is a great tool. Not only to help yourself learn how to identify more fonts, but also in those pinch situations where you really need to know what font they used. For instance to replicate a logo or some area of type. This app is definitely a winner and I recommend it to everyone. It’s free so give it a try. What do you think about fonts and the iPhone? Are they a good team? Thanks for reading.
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