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WhatTheFont – Shazam for Fonts

myfonts.com

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Re: WhatTheFont – Shazam for Fonts

#61

Post by nerfhammer »

slig wrote: post #46
Aardwolf wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Normally I'm not the fan of unneeded mobile app dependence of things (e.g. home lighting). But in this case, taking photo of your computer monitor and getting font name as result seems more convenient than taking screenshot, cropping, uploading, etc...

If you're on a Mac, try Command + Shift + 4 to take a screenshot with a crop tool that's saved on your ~/Desktop folder.

try command + cntrl + shift + 4.

copies the image straight into the clipboard, no detritus to your desktop. many web apps will just accept the cmd +V paste like an uploaded file.

Re: WhatTheFont – Shazam for Fonts

#62

Post by fractallyte »

ghostly_s wrote: post #48
seahcb wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it does fine with screens. The problem you're encountering is that we don't have any Google Fonts in the MyFonts library currently. The app can only return fonts that we have on MyFonts.

> The app can only return fonts that we have on MyFonts. Oh, so it's actually a useless tool then. Thanks for the clarification.

Hey, that's not nice.

MyFonts is one of the best font sites I know of, with a huge selection of fonts and top designers. There are regular offers on new fonts, and informative interviews (great for discovering typefaces).

I find WTF very useful. Sure, it's not perfect, and I continue to hope for better accuracy and results. I'm glad to hear they're working on it.

Re: WhatTheFont – Shazam for Fonts

#63

Post by fractallyte »

amelius wrote: post #50
superasn wrote: post #49

It's a great program to write when you start learning machine learning, kinda like the next step to OCR. Since it's hacker news just wondering what would be the best ML program to do it? Also as for datasets I think you can just download a huge ttf library from the net and write a program to render them into png files.

If you want to take it a step further: there's an app ([1]) that allows you to aim your smartphone camera at a sign, and it will identify the font, translate the sign to a different language, and edit the image with the translated text. All in real time. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2OfQdYrHRs

Word Lens was actually introduced on HN a few years back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2014555

Re: WhatTheFont – Shazam for Fonts

#64

Post by tacon »

I ran through the online font identifier tools just a few days ago, doing a React exercise for a credit card component (dress it up with CSS!). I used Snipping Tool to take an image of the PDF image, and went looking for the font:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/erd4nuoavxun2rr/BigBankFont.PNG?dl...

I googled for free online font identification, and started testing. WhatTheFont completely chokes and returns zero candidates, even after moving the dot and the lower i into one glyph, identifying glyphs, etc. Next up, FontSquirrel Matcherator, which initially failed, though it at least showed candidates. I noticed that the FontSquirrel button was not on, so I clicked it and retested. At the top of the results was Fira Sans, oddly without any sample of the font. (hiding in plain site?) And it is Fira Sans, available on Google fonts. Font Squirrel uses the FontSpring Matcherator, so I tested at their site, and failed. No extra options to turn on to find Fira Sans.

Font Squirrel is now my favorite font site. And where is the site that runs these engines through all the Google fonts to see who is honest?

Re: WhatTheFont – Shazam for Fonts

#65

Post by pault »

seahcb wrote: post #43
welcomebrand wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just tried a couple of photos of websites from my monitor and it's really nowhere near close to identifying. One of them was roboto from the play store which I'd have hoped would be an easy one. Does it struggle with photos of screens in particular?

No, it does fine with screens. The problem you're encountering is that we don't have any Google Fonts in the MyFonts library currently. The app can only return fonts that we have on MyFonts.

MyFonts is my go-to source for fonts when I'm doing design work, and I understand why WTF is limited to MyFonts' database, but I do think it kind of cripples it and it would be really cool if it could identify external fonts by name but suggest a similar font in the catalog. Thanks for the great service you provide!

Re: WhatTheFont – Shazam for Fonts

#66

Post by on_and_off »

pc86 wrote: post #57
seahcb wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it does fine with screens. The problem you're encountering is that we don't have any Google Fonts in the MyFonts library currently. The app can only return fonts that we have on MyFonts.

Why not just say "we recognize this font but don't have the license/permission to tell you what it is?"

AFAIK Roboto has a very permissive licence, is this really a permission problem ?

Re: WhatTheFont – Shazam for Fonts

#67

Post by alpb »

Check out WhatFont Chrome Extension: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/whatfont/jabopobgc...

I think it's 10 times more useful even though you’re not a designer/frontend type of a person and just curious about fonts that are shown in your browser. Obviously doesn’t do what WhatTheFont does, but I think it's a lot more practical.

WhatTheFont has been exactly the same since like 2009 if my memory serves correctly. So this is nothing new.

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