For years, Fontographer has been among the top names in font editor software. Though it has fallen a bit behind, coming in at third place with our TopTenREVIEWS Bronze Award, this application remains an excellent font maker and is more than capable of designing even a complex font. We recommend, however, that beginners avoid this product, as the user manual was written for the Mac version and therefore only partially complete.
Scoring nearly perfectly in this category, Fontographer certainly demonstrates why it is so well known in the font design community. You can import vector or bitmap images to create a new font from scratch, or you can create a new font by blending two existing fonts into one. We especially like that you can choose the blend percentage. For example, you can use 30% of one font and 70% of another, or you can split them 50/50.
Creating composite glyphs is quite simple, too, thanks to the easy copy-and-paste functionality. There are a few extra steps needed to fine-tune your composite glyph, but they are hardly rocket science and should be a snap for anyone who knows what they’re doing.
Basic drawing tools are well represented in this font creator, though the advanced tools leave a bit to be desired and there are no vector paint tools to speak of. We found that you can create a corner, tangent, curve or point in your glyph, and you can add shapes like a polygon, rectangle or ellipse. There is also a calligraphic pen for drawing your own calligraphy-style strokes. You can also add nodes, or points, on the outline so you can make the most miniscule of adjustments.
The one advanced tool that really stands out is the perspective tool, which allows you to rotate a glyph on a 3D plane. That is, you can rotate it along the x, y or z axis for a unique visual effect. No other font editor we reviewed had this function.
Batch transformation is achieved by holding the Shift or Control keys when selecting glyphs, but the available functions are limited to skew, scale, mirror flip and shift. Guidelines will help you achieve consistent results with these and all other edits.
Manual and automatic hinting are available, so you have the option to choose between getting nitty-gritty or letting the font generator do the work for you. The same goes for kerning: You can adjust kerning pairs yourself, or let the computer adjust all the common pairs for you. The font creator also has automated bitmap tracing, which converts a bitmap glyph to outlines so it can be saved as an outline font.
The glyph metrics editor has a much cleaner look than in many of the other font editors we reviewed. You enter your test text at the top of the window. It appears in the main part of the window, blown up for easier viewing. At the bottom are the numerical values for the glyphs’ metrics. This way, you have the option of adjusting metrics in the more user-friendly, what-you-see-is-what-you-get mode, or you can use the more technical numerical values.
Again, Fontographer scores nearly perfectly here. The only feature the software is actually missing is the ability to fully test fonts before exporting and installing them. (Though it could be argued that you can test a font in the metrics window, this method did not quite meet our criteria for fully testing a font.)
Fontographer edits all the various font formats, and saves fonts in all the outline formats available. You can even save a font as an Adobe Illustrator EPS file, so the individual glyphs can be adjusted more finely in the Illustrator application.
You can change certain features of an entire font at once, as we mentioned, and you can also make changes to the font’s family and style names, as well as its copyright and author information. This font editor even has a handy “change weight” function that will make a font more or less bold with just a few clicks.
We found this font creator to be relatively simple to use, provided that you already know the basics behind font creation and editing. The three different windows – the font window, the glyph editor and the metrics window – can all be opened, closed, minimized or resized as needed, so everything is where you want it and nothing is getting in your way.
Drawing tools are not labeled, but the icons are familiar. And if you’re really unsure about what a button does, just hover your mouse over it and the name of the tool will appear. These tools appear in their own window, which can be opened or moved as needed. Likewise, the layers panel can be closed or moved if it’s in the way. This panel lets you turn outlines, templates, guidelines and hints on or off, so you see only what you want to see when editing glyphs.
This font creator’s help and support options fall behind just a bit when compared to the other products we reviewed. Most of the options, like an online email form, FAQs, user forum and bug reporting, are all present. But Fontographer has no tutorials, which many other applications have.
Additionally, the developer has yet to come out with a Windows-specific manual for this new version of Fontographer. Instead, you have to make do with the Mac manual, which lacks some PC-specific details and includes some Mac-specific information that you don’t really need. But the rest of the information is useful, and the 500-page manual includes a wonderful glossary of terms.
Overall, Fontographer remains a top contender among its font editor peers. It makes up for the few features it lacks by its incredible ease of use and a few of its unique functions, like the change weight and perspective tools. The lack of a PC-specific user manual means that beginners may want to look elsewhere, unless they are willing to do a bit of outside research.
