While it’s true that a font editor that only works with bitmap fonts is a bit dated, BitFonter remains the highest-quality bitmap font maker we have reviewed. After all, a bitmap font can still be installed on most systems, and if you want, you can always use a font converter to turn your bitmap font into an outline-based font.

Opening an existing font or creating a new one from scratch automatically opens the font window, which displays all of the font’s glyphs at once. When you make changes to a glyph in the glyph editor window, the changes are automatically reflected in the font window once the glyph editor is closed. This means you always know exactly what changes you’ve made, and which ones you have yet to apply.

This font creator offers some of the best tools compared to the tools of other bitmap-based applications. It offers basic drawing tools like a pencil, eraser and brush, as well as some more advanced tools. These include shapemakers for drawing lines, rectangles, ellipses and polygons, as well as a fill tool for adding color and a magic wand selection tool. There is even a text tool that will insert characters for you to use as a basis for creating your own glyphs.

Because it is bitmap based, BitFonter is able to offer exceptional font effects that go beyond the basic scale, skew and rotate. Creating bold effects is easy, and you can apply a number of filters, including sharpen, soften, Gaussian blur, emboss or even a custom filter. Bitmap fonts are able to incorporate color, so BitFonter allows you to adjust brightness, contrast, hue and saturation. And if you’re working with images, the remove background feature might come in quite handy.

BitFonter is also the only bitmap-based font generator we reviewed that allows you to create blended fonts, which is done by taking two fonts and combining them into a new font. It also stands apart from other bitmap font creators in that it allows you to manually or automatically edit kerning, which most other bitmap font generators are too basic to include. In addition, the glyph metrics editor makes metrics easy, thanks to a what-you-see-is-what-you-get interface. And you can add or remove glyphs just by typing them into the editor as you would type in a word processor.

If you want to create an outline font, you can create outlines from your bitmap image with the auto trace function. While BitFonter can technically save fonts in outline formats like TrueType or Type 1, they are older versions of the file extensions; the TrueType version is actually saved as a bitmap, while the Type 1 is saved as an AFM file. But opening, editing and saving bitmap fonts remains as easy and simple as ever.

We found the user interface of this font editor to be incredibly easy to navigate, thanks to pop-out windows for each function and tool palate. While having all of these windows open at once may clutter your screen, it is immensely easier than having to navigate tabs that take up the entire window. The drawing tools' icons aren’t labeled, but they look familiar enough to be recognizable. And if you’re still not sure what a tool does, just hover your cursor over it to get the tool’s name.

BitFonter’s ease of use certainly removes some of the complexity when you make your own font, but its great help and support options make the font design process even better. Though the user guide has the annoyance of being a separate download, it is more than 300 pages long and is incredibly detailed. We were disappointed to note, however, that the page numbers in the index don't match up with the guide’s actual page numbers.

In addition to the user guide, you can access a full range of help and support options on FontLab’s website. These options include video tutorials, a user forum, FAQs and bug reporting tools. In addition, you can contact the technical support team via an online email form. The team was quite responsive and helpful in regards to our help requests.