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ScanFont 5 for Windows User Manual

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1. Info Panel Tool Option ae a Rulers zoom In Ctrl hum zoom uk trl Fit bo Window Actual Pixels Auto Line Feed You can also drag a menu item onto a toolbar to add a toolbar button Hold the CTRL key to copy the item 141 To get access to all the ScanFont commands open the Commands page in the Customize dialog box Customize Commands iT Toolbars Tools Keyboard M enu 0 ptions Categories Commands pem Edit View lage Tools Wi indo Lael gave Help pe hlenu Save Ag Standard Bar Tools Bar Exi Operations Bar All Commands Description Open an existing document In the left list select a group of commands and use the list of commands in the right list as a source of menu items and toolbar buttons drag the commands from there 142 Customizing Menus If you want to create a new menu select the New Menu group in the left menu and drag it onto the main menu bar or any of the toolbars A new menu appears and you can start adding commands to it using the drag drop technique described above With the Customize dialog not only can you customize the main menu but also most of the context menus which appear when you right click on ScanFont windows Open the Menu page in the Customize dialog box and choose a context menu in the right dropdown list Select contest menu Image Contest Menu Image Selection Menu A menu appears on screen and you can cus
2. Choose a User defined image click on New to create a new image or Edit to edit one of the User images If you decide to change the image use the included image editor to change it Edit Button Image Picture Preview Use one of the Tools to edit the enlarged image and choose a color in the Colors area Click on the OK button when you are ready 145 146 Converting a Menu to a Toolbar In ScanFont some menus can be converted to toolbars If you open a menu and can see a tiny caption in the top area of it you can drag it to any place on screen and it becomes a toolbar View VIEW Show Layers Show Layers arid Transparency aj Transparency j Outline Toolbars ieee Baseline Toolbars Brushes Panel Brushes Panel Et Image Cells Palette Panel Palette Panel lt gt Contour Masks v Info Panel Info Panel Tool Options Panel Tool Options Panel a Rulers sar Rulers zoom In Ckel Mum zoom In Ckel Mum zoom Out Ctri zoom Out Ctri Not all menus have this feature but you may find it really useful OK that is almost all about customizing toolbars and menus A few more things To reset changes you have made in toolbars use the Reset All button on the Toolbars page in the Customize dialog box Customize Operations V Show Layers Standard H Tools Use the New command on the same page to create a new toolbar After doing this add commands to i
3. At least 15Mb of free space on the hard disk drive and at least 64 MB RAM 10 Getting Started Using ScanFont is not very tricky The process of converting an image to a font is as follows 1 Prepare the source image with image editing applications or scan it from within ScanFont Refer to the Preparing Images chapter for details Edit the image with ScanFont Autosplit the image Manually correct the autosplitting results oS A pP Trace the bitmaps and transfer the outlines into a font opened in an outline font editing application Preparing Images In this chapter we will discuss the preparation of source images Later we will talk about editing images locating glyphs in an image and converting the glyphs images into outline characters In ScanFont you can use the following sources of images e Animage ofa font or of individual glyphs printed or written on paper and placed in a scanner e An image file in TIFF PNG BMP GIF or JPEG format e An image file in vector EPS format e Animage ina format supported by ScanFont sfd sf e The Windows Clipboard e The ScanFont bitmap editor window where you can draw directly in ScanFont The easiest way to get an image into ScanFont is to have a scanner connected to your computer Place the paper with the image into the scanner and scan it using ScanFont ScanFont supports the TWAIN interface so it can work with almost all scanners Refer to your scanner s d
4. To cut a cell into two cells 1 Select the Knife tool E in the Tools toolbar 2 Position the mouse cursor at the beginning of the line that will separate the cell 3 Click the left mouse button to start defining a straight line segment or hold down the left mouse button to begin a freehand line 4 Move the mouse to define a straight line segment or to draw a freehand separating line 5 Click the left mouse button again to finish defining the straight line segment or release the mouse button to finish drawing the freehand line The separating line must intersect the contour of the glyph shape 6 Double click the left mouse button to separate the glyph shapes or press the Esc key to abort the operation Cell Mask You can see that the glyph shapes in cells have green outlines after autosplitting the image This is a cell mask The mask view can be switched on and off with the View gt Show Layers gt Contour Mask command The only purpose of the cell mask is to define which pixels of the split image will go to the glyph in the font For example the dot in the top right corner of the picture above is not masked to be included and will be ignored when the cell is traced and placed into the font Use the Image gt Cell Mask gt Update with Selection command to turn the selected area of an image into a cell mask Use the Image gt Cell Mask gt Remove command to completely dispose of the mask in the selected cell
5. 150 a Proportional Height 150 Z Resample Nearest Neighbor hi Parameter a a i EN 2 Enter the scale factor for horizontal and vertical transformation and select the scaling method in the Resample dropdown list Check the Proportional check box if you want to keep the vertical and horizontal scale factors the same Then click on the OK button To abort scaling click on Cancel The Resample method is the way scaling will be performed When you choose a method other than Simple the slider becomes available Use it along with the method to apply different effects during the scale operation It may take a little experimentation to find the best algorithm for your image In any case you can edit the image manually after scaling You can see the preview of an image in the preview field of the dialog while changing the parameters of transformation Rotate To rotate the image by a specific angle select the Tools gt Rotate gt Arbitrary command The Rotate dialog appears Angle 28 i Enter the angle for rotation in the Angle text field or use the slider below Positive values rotate the image clockwise You can see the preview of the selection in the preview field of the dialog while changing the angle for rotation The button allows you to set the rotation angle with the vector right in the preview field Click on the button and draw a line in the preview box For example the horizontal line drawn fr
6. To restore the mask you will need to select image pixels with e g the Magic Wand tool and then use Image gt Cell Mask gt Update with Selection You can change colors for cell borders and cell mask on the Glyph and Image Window page of the Tools gt Options dialog described in the ScanFont Options section Cell Selected cell Cell mask 55 56 Saving and Restoring Splitting Data To save your image with all its separation information use the Save command from the File menu But you may want to save the image splitting data separately To save the splitting data 1 Select the Save Separation Info command in the Image menu 2 In the standard File Save dialog box that appears select the folder where you want to save the data and enter the file name 3 Click on Save to save the data Later you can load this saved data and apply it to the currently open image To load and apply the splitting data 1 Select the Load Separation Info command in the Image menu 2 Inthe standard File Open dialog box that appears select the file with data 3 Click on Open to load and apply the data to the image Defining the Scale Factor The scale factor in ScanFont defines how the glyphs in the split image will fit the future font height Usually ScanFont automatically computes this scale factor when you separate an image but it may need to be adjusted especially when cells in the image have different heights ScanFont has the ab
7. option is checked the Height will be updated while you enter the Width and vice versa There are several predefined methods for scaling images included in the Resample dropdown list If any choice other than the Simple resampling method is selected you can tune it up with the slider to get the best result for your particular image Note that what is good for one image will not necessarily be good for another Click on the OK button to scale the image or click on Cancel to abort The second way to resize an image is adding or removing work space around the image 1 Select the Canvas Size command in the Image menu The Canvas Size dialog will appear Canvas Size New canvas size Pixels Proportional a Piel width 1000 Height 875 Anchor MILL 2 Enter the new image Width and Height in pixels If the Proportional option is checked the Height will be updated while you enter the Width and vice versa 3 For Anchor click on a square to indicate where to position the existing image on the new canvas 4 Click on the OK button to scale the image or Cancel to abort You can undo both operations using the Edit gt Undo command X Note If the image was separated into cells the separation information will be lost when resizing the image 27 28 Basic Tools To open the Tools toolbar select the View gt Toolbars gt Tools command We
8. Autosplit Editing Splitting Data Saving and Restoring Splitting Data Defining the Scale Factor Editing Baselines Other Cell Commands CREATING CHARACTERS Outline Font Editor Placing Characters into a Font Tracing Options Easy Trace Options Advanced Trace Options ADVANCED IMAGE EDITING The Image Window Image Window Contents View Menu Info Panel Context Menu Using the Window Menu Tools Selecting Operations on a Selection Drawing Other Tools Operations Flip Horizontal and Flip Vertical Slant Make Bold Shift Clear Bitmap Brightness Contrast Hue Saturation Threshold 40 43 45 46 49 51 56 57 60 63 64 65 66 69 71 72 113 Invert Colorize Removing Background Emboss Smart Blur Gaussian Blur Enhance Reduce Noise Median Noise Sharpen Soften Custom Filter Find Edges Outline Operations SCANFONT USER INTERFACE Basic Terms Character Glyph Font Encoding Some More Definitions Customizing ScanFont s User Interface Customizing Toolbars Customizing Menus Customizing Individual Items Converting a Menu to a Toolbar Customization of the Keyboard Links to External Programs Faster Method to Customize Commands ScanFont Options General Options Image Window Options Image To Font Conversion Outline Font Editor INDEX 115 116 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 129 130 133 134 134 135 135 136 137 139 140 143 144 146 148 150 151 152 1
9. Type 1 PostScript Type 1 a font format using cubic b spline mathematics to describe glyph outlines Developed and promulgated by Adobe Systems Unicode range the portion of Unicode dealing with a particular language or script E g the Hebrew range the Cyrillic range the extended Latin range A Unicode range is not limited to 256 characters It is usually a contiguous part of Unicode VFB format the internal outline font format of Fontlab products Customizing ScanFont s User Interface As you may infer from the title of this section most of the ScanFont user interface which means menus toolbars and keyboard shortcuts is customizable We believe our default interface is the easiest to use but if for some reason you do not like it you are free to make any changes you want If you do not want to change anything in the ScanFont user interface you can fast forward to the next section The general idea of customization is simple there is a long list of commands that you can use and three kinds of controls menus toolbars and keyboard shortcuts Through customization you can assign any command to a menu item button on a toolbar or combination of keys pressed on a keyboard In addition you can organize commands in context menus or toolbars Most of the customization commands are concentrated in the Customize panel that you can open with the Customize command from the Tools menu or the same command located in the context menu whic
10. You will see ten text boxes in which to enter values They are arranged as a square 3 by 3 matrix plus a scale factor When you enter the Matrix values the Scale factor will automatically change reflecting the matrix values sum Use the Scale slider to change the factor examine the preview to the left then click on OK to apply the filter or Cancel to dispose of the dialog To see the original image press and hold down the CTRL key Of course you can undo this operation by using the Undo command 127 Take some time to experiment with this filter We will show you some examples here Original image Filter values applied Maine T 1 i ha 5 1 n 1 0 100 oO 100 Maro 1 1 1 1 T 1 1 1 1 sia p gt i 1m Ma TT N Scale E E i100 0 100 Result image As you can see the parameters in the last example allow you to perfect the image by removing unwanted black pixels outside and white holes inside the glyph s shape This is a more general case of the Enhance operation described on page 122 128 Find Edges This command allows you to get the bitmap contour of an image As with other filters it can be applied to the selected part of an image or to the whole image To apply this operation select the Find Edges command in the Tools gt Filter menu As it has no customizable parameters you will see the result immediately For example Before Use the Undo command to undo the operatio
11. description of this operation in the Brightness Contrast section on page 43 111 112 Hue Saturation This operation is also useful for retouching color images As seen from the command name you can use it to change the hue and the saturation of an image colors To edit the image hue saturation or lightness select the Hue Saturation item in the Tools gt Adjust menu You will see the Hue Saturation dialog Hue Saturation Saturation Lightness Use the Hue slider to change the color hue of the image Move the Saturation slider to the left to make the colors less saturated or to the right to make them more saturated Move the Lightness slider to the left to make the image darker or to the right to make it lighter You can preview the image in the preview field of the dialog To see the original image press and hold down the Crrt key Click on the OK button to apply changes when finished or Cancel to abort the operation X Note This operation does not work with black amp white images Threshold The Threshold command fills light pixels of the image with white color and dark pixels with black Actually it turns color images into black amp white images but it does not change the image color mode The boundary between light and dark can be defined in the Threshold dialog Threshold Threshold By Opacity ox cere The threshold operation can be performed by one of the following p
12. of the rectangle s corners If you are drawing an ellipse position the cursor on one of the corners of the imaginary rectangle that surrounds the ellipse Hold down the left mouse button and drag the mouse to draw a rectangle or an ellipse Hold down the Suirtr key while drawing to draw a square instead of a rectangle or a circle instead of an ellipse Hold down the Att key while dragging to place the center of the ellipse or rectangle at the place where you initially positioned the mouse cursor or Pressing the Att key before you press the mouse button will change the tool temporarily to the Eye Dropper tool Release the left mouse button to finish drawing or press the Esc key to abort The ellipse or rectangle will be filled with the current color if the Fill interior check box in the Tool Options panel is checked To temporarily change the fill mode hold down the CTRL key while dragging 35 36 Zoom Tool Often the size of the image that you are editing is larger than the size of the window You may need to see more details of an image Do this by using the Zoom in and Zoom out buttons in the Image window or the Zoom tool To change the zoom mode 1 Select the Zoom tool in the Tools toolbar 2 Position the mouse cursor or by holding down the Axr key on one of the corners of the image region that you want to zoom in on or zoom out 3 Hold down the left mouse button and move the mouse to select the
13. present the baseline s position is calculated according to the outlines 6 Click on the OK button to let ScanFont autosplit the image into cells using the selected algorithm If you are not satisfied with the autosplitting results repeat the steps with another algorithm Customizing Autosplit The Book smart algorithm is customizable You can change its parameters by clicking on the More Options button in the Separate Shapes dialog The Separate Shapes Options dialog will open Separate Shapes Options Activate Smart Split feature Automatically merge overlapping cells Merge only it overlapping area is greater than 50 The Automatically merge overlapping cells option allows you to combine cells that form glyphs like when checked The value in the editable field defines how much the cells must overlap to be combined into a single cell The Automatically merge stacked cells option allows you to combine cells that sit on top of other cells when checked The value in the editable field defines the length of the most common projection in relation to the projection of a smaller cell 49 50 Here is how our sample image looks after autosplitting it with all the default options EJ Image C Test Fonts SF Imagestall Mag Til beneeieneieeennceeeccec a toa 200 300 qoo 500 B00 700 aoa DELETE EEE EEE EEE LEER EEE DEE EEE EEE EEE EEE EEE EEE EEE EEE 300 faon faves PEL UTE EEE TE EE EEE EET T S00 pro
14. programs to menu items in ScanFont s Tools menu Customize Commands Toolbars Tools Keyboard Menu Options Menu contents Command Arguments Initial directory There is a list of the assigned programs in the middle of the page and it is empty by default Click on this button to add a link Enter the name of the program as it will appear in the menu Photoshop Then use the button at the right of the Command editing field to locate the program to run Editing fields at the bottom of the Command field allow you to define arguments for the program you want to run from ScanFont s menu Use the L button at the top of the Tools list to remove the reference to the program and the and J buttons to change the order of the commands Now you know everything about the customization of menus toolbars and the keyboard so you can click on the Close button at the bottom of the Customize dialog box to exit the customization mode Important note in the manual we describe all commands buttons and keyboard shortcuts as they come with ScanFont without any customization If you changed the interface but want to follow the manual reset all changes with the Reset buttons on the Toolbars Keyboard and Menu pages of the Customize dialog box Faster Method to Customize Commands You can customize toolbars and menus without opening the Customize dialog box by holding down the Axr key on the keyboard and draggin
15. region 4 Release the left mouse button The new zoom mode will be selected To change the zoom mode by one level simply click or Att click somewhere in the editing field To get the Zoom tool temporarily while another tool is selected hold down CTRL SPACEBAR Or CTRL ALT SPACEBAR If the Zoom tool is selected the Tool Options panel includes some additional zoom buttons Zoom tool Increases the zoom mode by one level Decreases the zoom mode by one level Fit Fits the editing field to the size of the Image window Sets the view to 100 Basic Operations You can transform an open image or a selected part of an image using the commands from the Tools menu We call these commands operations or transformations Some commonly used transformation commands have corresponding buttons in the Operations toolbar for easy access Operations You can turn the toolbar on or off with the help of the View gt Toolbars menu We will describe some of the operations here in this section Others will be described later in the Operations section in the Advanced Image Editing chapter Do not forget that you can use the Undo command if you want to undo any of the operations 37 38 Scale The Scale command allows you to resize the selection by adding or deleting the appropriate number of pixels To scale the image or selection 1 Select the Scale command in the Tools menu You will see the Scale dialog wide
16. the Current Color box To see the numeric values of the currently selected color position the mouse cursor over the Current Color box You will see the panel popups with RGB and opacity color information E3 Image C Te Ri I Hold down the left mouse button drag the mouse and release the left mouse button to open the Info panel instantly A M103 a a 255 Ei E z5 kH M2 tw 191 130 H BF Note that the Info panel shows the color information for the image pixel under the mouse cursor not the current color You can hide show the Info Panel at any time by the command in the View menu 97 98 Color Palettes Sometimes it is useful to have the color palette in a separate floating window To open this window select the Palette Panel command in the View menu The Palette panel will appear with the default color palette gt Tip You can drag this window out right from the Color Palette bar of the Image window Now you can use the Palette panel along with the Color Palette in the Image window You can drag it around the screen to find the most convenient place To resize the panel click on and drag its right bottom corner There are two small controls at the bottom left corner of the Palette panel that are used to change the palettes in the window To change the color palette in the panel use the Select Palette dropdown list w Default Black hite Grayscale Spectrum To view and use t
17. this button and then click on the background in the preview box to pick up a background color Use the threshold control for better results Treshold Black and white mapping Y r a I DN EIIN AAD EN N RAREN aS me You can undo this operation using the Edit gt Undo command Obviously this image is more useful for splitting into separate glyphs than the original one But you can continue to enhance the image by using other commands from the Tools menu Brightness Contrast The next two operations are useful for retouching color images As seen from the command name you can change the brightness and the contrast of images with this command In addition this operation helps control image transparency To edit the image brightness or contrast select the Brightness Contrast choice in the Tools gt Adjust menu You will see the dialog Brightness Contrast Brightness Contrast Transparency Move the Brightness slider to the left to make the image darker or to the right to make it lighter Move the Contrast slider to the left to make the image lower contrast or to the right to make it higher contrast Use the Transparency slider to make the image more or less transparent You can view the preview of the image in the preview field of the dialog To see the original image press and hold down the Crrt key Click on the OK button to apply the changes when finished or Cancel to abort the operation X Note Th
18. to open this dialog Check the appropriate check box and proceed by clicking on the Export button Clicking on Cancel will stop the Place Into Font operation You can make these options permanent for the current image by setting the Always apply these settings for current document check box In this case ScanFont will remember your choice and will not produce this dialog until you hold down the Crrt key on the keyboard while choosing the Place Into Font command If ScanFont cannot locate any outline font editor in your system or fails to communicate with a particular version of the server application launch the application manually and try again Index advance width 158 AICB option 18 Append 130 AsiaFont Studio 65 autosplitting 45 customizing 49 background removing 41 baseline 60 aligning 45 editing 45 moving 45 bounding box 45 brush angle 31 101 diameter 31 101 hardness 31 101 roundness 31 101 Brush tool 31 101 Brushes Panel 31 101 canvas size 26 Cell tool 51 cells defining 45 exporting 64 mask 51 merging 45 splitting 45 Color Palette 95 Custom Filter 127 Define Cell Tool 51 Ellipse tool 35 103 Emboss 119 Enhance 122 EPS 18 Eraser tool 101 Fill tool 102 Find Edges 129 FontLab 65 FreeHand 18 Gaussian Blur 121 glyph advance width 158 drawing 95 names 64 Illustrator 18 image conversion 158 size 26 splitting 45 Image Window 45 k
19. will describe only a few of the tools here Other tools will be discussed later in the Advanced Image Editing chapter on page 73 Select Tool Use the Select tool to outline a rectangular area and display it with a grid To select a rectangular part r 1 1 Choose the Select tool in the Tools toolbar 2 Put the mouse cursor on one of the corners of the rectangle that you want to select 3 Hold down the left mouse button and move the mouse cursor to the opposite corner of the area that you want to select 4 Release the left mouse button Tip To temporarily switch to the Select tool while another tool is active hold down the CTRL key on the keyboard To add to the selection hold down the Suirt key or use the Add to selection button in the Tool Options panel The cursor will change to The new selection will be added to the previously selected area To subtract from the selection hold down the Axr key or use the Subtract from selection button in the Tool Options panel The cursor will change to The new selection will be subtracted from the previously selected area To subtract from the selection hold down ALT SHIEFT or use the Intersect with selection button in the Tool Options panel The cursor will change to Te Only the common area of the new and previous selection will be selected To deselect the area click outside of the selected area or Crru click inside the area or use the Deselect command in th
20. 55 156 158 159 161 Introduction ScanFont is a powerful add on to FontLab Studio AsiaFont Studio or TypeTool for turning digital images into professional looking technically correct outline fonts in minutes ScanFont allows you to scan or draw font characters and export them to an outline font editor for further editing Click the mouse button a few times and you re done ScanFont includes a very precise autotracing algorithm that is designed to work with characters so you can transform everything that you can print on paper or see on the computer screen into high quality outlines and transfer them to FontLab Studio AFS or TypeTool which can export Type 1 TrueType or OpenType fonts The key features of ScanFont 5 are e High quality fully customizable autotracing algorithm especially designed to handle characters e Automatic detection of glyphs and strings in a source image e Support of almost all bitmap image formats black white or color e Support of vector EPS format High quality EPS import e Integrated full color bitmap editor with more than 15 tools and 20 filters e Free hand drawing tools with digitizing tablet support e Export of outlines to an outline font editor or FontLab vfb format e 100 levels of undo redo e Easy to use customizable interface About this Manual This manual covers the Windows version of ScanFont 5 The following chapters describe all of ScanFont s features in full detail They are or
21. Options dialog allows you to customize the process of creating fonts from bitmap images in ScanFont Image to font conversion Cells ordering phill Replace glyphs if already exist in the destination font Ignore glyph scaling set by the Scale tool Sidebearnings Calculate automatically Use fixed Left Right jo LPM 1000 units Define the order of placement of the image cells horizontal or vertical When horizontal order is selected the glyph shapes will be taken from the image line by line and when vertical order is checked III the shapes will be taken by columns When you place glyphs into the font you may overwrite existing glyphs This situation can be controlled with the Replace glyphs if already exist in the destination font option If it is switched on the existing glyphs will disappear from the font Otherwise they will be moved to the end of the font The images are usually scaled when placed in the font To not scale the glyph images switch on the Ignore glyph scaling option The scaling factor set with the Scale tool will be ignored The Sidebearings section in the dialog allows you to define how ScanFont generates the advance width of glyphs You can allow ScanFont to generate the left and right glyph sidebearings automatically or you may enter your custom fixed values Use fixed Lett Right LIPM 1000 units Outline Font Editor The Outline Font Editor page helps you c
22. ScanFont 5 for Windows User Manual ScanFont 5 user manual edition 5 0 1 11 2007 Copyright 1992 2007 by Fontlab Ltd All rights reserved Editors Sasha Petrov Adam Twardoch Ted Harrison Yuri Yarmola Cover illustration Pawet Jonca pejot com No part of this publication may be reproduced stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic mechanical photocopying recording or otherwise without the prior written consent of the publisher Any software referred to herein is furnished under license and may only be used or copied in accordance with the terms of such license AsiaFont Studio BitFonter CompoCompiler FONmaker FogLamp FontFlasher FontLab ScanFont SigMaker TransType TypeTool FontAudit VectorPaint and the FontLab logo are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Fontlab Ltd in the United States and or other countries Apple the Apple Logo Mac Mac OS Macintosh and TrueType are trademarks of Apple Computer Inc registered in the United States and other countries Adobe PostScript Photoshop Type Manager Illustrator Macromedia Fontographer Flash and Freehand are trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated which may be registered in certain jurisdictions OpenType Windows Windows 95 Windows 98 Windows XP and Windows NT are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and or other countries IBM is a register
23. ally or horizontally hold down the Suirr key on the keyboard If you want to permanently prevent the scale bar from being slanted enable this setting in the Tools gt Options dialog Constrain the Scale bar alignment to vertical direction Note that only the length of the scale bar makes sense You can see and edit the current scale value actually the length of the scale bar in the Tool Options panel It is measured in image pixels Scale tool Scale value 81 400 The Auto button in the Tool Options panel sets the default scale factor for selected cells Note If you want to reset all the scale changes you have made for individual cells deselect all cells and click on the P Auto button in the Tool Options panel 59 60 Editing Baselines Usually glyphs are aligned in strings in the source image ScanFont uses this data to restore information about a glyph s vertical positioning In the string glyphs are aligned to a baseline the zero level of the string Some glyphs lie above the baseline some of them intersect the baseline and some are below Ag _ The definition of a baseline is the zero point of the vertical coordinates In ScanFont you can set baselines for every line of text or even for every glyph cell When the glyphs are extracted from the image and placed into a font the information about the relative position of the glyph s image and baseline will be used so you will not
24. ames option you can assign names using the ranges from the dropdown list Automatically assign Choose Nothing in the Automatically assign dropdown list if you do not want ScanFont automatically assign names and or Unicode codepoints to glyphs 67 68 6 Check the Place all cells option to place all the defined cells of the image If no cells were selected this option is not available and all the defined cells will be placed into the font 7 When you are finished defining cell placement click on the OK button The Tracing Options dialog will appear on the screen Set the parameters of bitmap tracing described later and click on the OK button again to finish the export process X Note Define the order of placement of the image cells and some other options in the Tools gt Options dialog described in the ScanFont Options section on page 152 If the Export outline font into VFB file option is off ScanFont will launch outline font editor and present another dialog Export as Outline Font Place inka Mew Font Select the font opened in FontLab Studio or TypeTool or AFS in the Place into dropdown list or choose New font and click on Export to finish If Export outline font into VFB file was switched on in Tools gt Options ScanFont will open the standard File Save dialog box Select the folder where you want to save the VFB file and enter the file name The bitmap glyphs will be converted to black amp
25. anFont 1 Select the Open command in the File menu or click on the Open button on the Workflow toolbar 2 Inthe standard File Open dialog open the folder and select the file that you want to open and click on the Open button You can also drag and drop the icon of the image file onto the ScanFont main window You can open several images each in their own window The number of open images is limited only by the memory allocated to the program Tip When you open an image file the file name will appear in the bottom part of the File menu Later you can easily open this image again by simply selecting this file name in the menu Note ScanFont has certain limits for the size of the image The image width cannot exceed 32 Kb This means true color images with millions of colors cannot be wider than 8191 pixels images with thousands of colors cannot be wider than 16383 pixels images with 256 colors or grays cannot be wider than 32 K pixels etc 17 18 Importing EPS ScanFont can import images in outline vector EPS format This very important feature of ScanFont allows you to quickly convert images drawn in your favorite vector editor into a high quality outline font You can save outline images from Adobe Illustrator Macromedia FreeHand or other vector editors and then use ScanFont to easily transfer outlines to FontLab Studio AsiaFont Studio or TypeTool for further processing The image autotracing step may be skipp
26. and in the Edit menu To join two or more selected cells into one cell select the Merge Cells command in the Image menu The selected cells will be merged into one cell which will remain selected To remove unwanted cells that are not glyphs shapes for example select these cells with the Cell tool and then select the Delete command in the Edit menu or simply press the DEL key The Cell tool is also used to manually create cells in the image You can use it to modify the results of automatic splitting or to do manual splitting from the outset To draw a new cell 1 Select the Cell tool in the Tools toolbar and press CTRL 2 Position the mouse cursor at the corner of a rectangle to be defined as a cell 3 Hold down the left mouse button and drag the mouse to draw a rectangle around the glyph in the image 4 Release the mouse button to finish defining a new cell A new cell rectangle will appear You can define all the glyphs cells that you need in a font with this manual image splitting tool You can define cells with the Selection tools as well Select part of an image with one of the image selection tools and then choose the Create Cell From Selection command in the Image menu You will see the selection rectangle become a new cell 53 54 Knife Tool The Knife tool e is used to manually cut a cell into two cells It is needed when one cell contains two or more glyph shapes after autosplitting the image
27. arameters Luminosity The luminance countered from pixel s red green and blue channels Opacity Pixel s opacity transparency component for fonts with millions of colors Color Pixel s hue angle 113 To see the original image press and hold down the CTRL key Before After This command cannot be applied to an image more than once X Note This operation does not work with black amp white images 114 Invert The Invert command inverts image colors In the simplest case the white pixels become black and the black pixels that compose the glyph shape become white Before After Use the Undo command to undo the operation Ul 116 Colorize The Colorize command is the opposite of the Threshold command in a sense It does not change the image color mode either but it allows you to fill all black areas with one color or even with a color grayscale pattern To colorize the image select the Colorize command in the Tools gt Filter menu and select the options in the Colorize dialog Colorize Assign by Luminosity Assign mode Color Add noise Apply to W E E v E Amount 10 oe a Select a method of determining what pixels should be colorized in the Assign by dropdown list Select a mode of image colorizing Color or Picture If you choose Color select the color that will be applied to the shapes of glyphs in the standard Colors dialog Chec
28. arameters work the same way as the Threshold operation Click on the OK button to apply the transformation or Cancel to abort This operation can clean up the image and even make it empty You may use the Reduce Noise command several times to achieve the best result 123 124 Median Noise The Median Noise operation makes the image more or less noisy by averaging the colors of neighbor pixels To apply this operation select the Tools gt Filter gt Median Noise command The Median Noise dialog will appear Median Noise Radius E pixels oo OO oom Enter the Radius value for pixel color averaging You will see the preview of the image in the preview field of the dialog To see the original image simply press and hold down the CTRL key Click on the OK button to apply the transformation or Cancel to abort Before After Use the Undo command to undo the operation You can use the Median Noise command multiple times to achieve the result you need Sharpen This command makes the image sharper and higher contrast It is the opposite of the Soften command described on page 126 To apply this operation select the Tools gt Filter gt Sharpen command The Sharpen dialog will appear Sharpen Enter the Level value of sharpness View the preview of the image in the preview field of the dialog To see the original image press and hold down the CTRL key Click on the OK button to apply the
29. attern fills the image aligned to the pattern s right edge and centered vertically The pattern fills the image aligned to the pattern s bottom left corner 117 118 Bottom Centered The pattern fills the image aligned to the pattern s bottom edge and centered horizontally Bottom Right The pattern fills the image aligned to the pattern s bottom right corner View the preview of the image in the preview field of the dialog To see the original image press and hold down the CTRL key Click on the OK button to apply changes when finished or Cancel to abort the operation Here are some examples of the Colorize command Removing Background See the description of this operation in the Removing Background section on page 41 Emboss This command and the remaining ones from the Tools gt Filter menu may be qualified as filters They are usually used for color image editing Emboss is a special filter command that will make the image look high relief To make the image high relief embossed 1 Select the Emboss command in the Tools gt Filter menu You will see the Emboss dialog Emboss Angle 200 f n Height 4 pixels Amount 80 Yo E 2 Use the Angle Height and Amount sliders to customize the filter and click on the OK button The Emboss filter will be applied To see the original image in the preview field press and hold down the CTRL key Before After 119 120 S
30. clicking on buttons 153 154 Other buttons and their meaning are described in the table Import options ag Export options x Reset options Apply Cancel OK Allows you to select a profile file that holds a particular configuration of all options and loads that profile You can create different profiles for different occasions and load them when needed for example separately for each format or foundry that you work with Exports current options to a profile file In a workgroup environment you can export a profile file and give it to your colleague who then can load it and generate fonts in the same environment When sending technical problem reports to Fontlab Ltd please always export your options into a profile file and attach that file with your report Resets all options to the factory defaults Applies the changes without closing the dialog box Many interface changes become visible immediately in the corresponding windows Closes the dialog box without applying changes Applies the changes and closes the dialog box General Options General Options pages are used to customize some interface options and the number of Undo levels Interface options Create new document at startup To make the program open the new font creation dialog at startup check the Create New Document at Startup option The New image dialog will open every time the program starts Other options Undo levels C
31. degrees clockwise Rotate 90 CCW 4 Rotates the image or selection 90 degrees counter clockwise Slant i Slants the image or selection to imitate italics Make Bold b Shifts the image or selection by several pixels to imitate bold style Do not forget that you can use the Undo command if you want to undo any of the transformations 107 108 Flip Horizontal and Flip Vertical When you want to flip an image in the vertical or horizontal direction you use the Flip Horizontal or Flip Vertical commands from the Tools menu Before flipping After horizontal flipping After vertical flipping As with other commands from the Tools menu this command may be applied to the selected areas of an image but when there is no selection it will apply to the entire image In the latter case outlines if any are flipped accordingly These operations may be necessary when you edit symmetrical glyphs Use the Undo command to undo the transformation Slant This is the special transformation command that can help you make an oblique image from a plain one To slant the image 1 Select the Slant command in the Tools menu You will see the Slant dialog Angle SS OOo 36 0 2 Enter the angle for slanting 12 degrees by default and click on the OK button To abort the operation click on Cancel Before After You can see the preview of the image in the preview field of the dialog while changing the slant angl
32. des at the extreme points of curves curves Every time you change a parameter the preview to the left also changes allowing you to check your results Use the zoom buttons of the preview if needed Clicking on the Cancel button will close the dialog without saving changes and stop the process of placing characters into a font The outline font editing application will not start in this case Note The options that you define in the Trace Options dialog are used also when you select the Trace Bitmap operation described later in the Outline Operations section on page 130 Advanced Image Editing When you create glyphs by image importing you may want to edit them to get the best result Also you may want to draw all font glyphs from scratch ScanFont includes professional bitmap editing tools and operations for this purpose It is time to review them All editing tools and operations discussed here are equally applicable to scanned imported or newly created images 74 The Image Window The Image Window is the main tool in ScanFont It is a universal and very powerful image editing module that also allows you to perform some font specific operations Image Window Contents After you scan or import an image from a file or the Clipboard the image will be read and shown in the Image window lest a ia Paran J a0 100 150 200 250 300 oO PETEPETIET ETE T TTT EEL LAL The Image window helps you to preview edit and d
33. ds a digital representation of a typeface A font contains an organized collection of glyphs along with some additional information that defines the spatial relations between the glyphs metrics and kerning as well as some central parameters such as names copyright information linespacing values etc font header 135 136 Encoding When the user presses a key or a combination of keys on a keyboard a numerical code is stored in the computer s memory This code represents a character an abstract unit of writing A series of such codes forms a string of text Every keystroke stands for a different character so every character uses a different numerical code also called codepoint Operating systems and applications need to know which number represents what character otherwise a spelling checker couldn t recognize words that you re typing So each operating system and each application uses a list that maps characters to numerical codes This mapping is called text encoding In the past different computers used different text encoding standards so called codepages so that the letter A was stored as number 142 in one program and as number 128 in another program Modern operating systems and applications encode text using the international Unicode Standard which assigns a unique numerical codepoint to every character used in writing by humankind In Unicode A always uses the code U 00C4 which is hexadecima
34. e To see the original press and hold down the CTRL key 109 Make Bold This is another special command that can help you build bold typefaces It uses the scaling algorithm to make images fatter To make the image bold 1 Select the Make Bold command in the Tools menu You will see the Make Bold dialog Make Bold shift bry s 7 pixels EE 2 Enter the Shift value in pixels and click on the OK button The image will become fatter Before After To see the original image in the preview field press and hold down the CTRL key Fine tune the image using the drawing tools if needed 110 Shift The Shift operation is used to move the whole image or its selected part in vertical or horizontal direction relatively to image cells and their baselines When you select the Shift command in the Tools menu the Shift dialog opens pixels pixels 100 The only thing that you can do with this operation is to move the image horizontally or vertically For example you may want to move several glyphs up or down at a time Positive values shift glyph s up and right negative values shift down and left You can use the Undo command to undo the Shift operation Clear Bitmap The Tools gt Clear Bitmap command erases the contents of the bitmap layer Outlines in the outline layer are preserved if any Use the Undo command if you want to undo the operation Brightness Contrast See the
35. e Edit menu 29 30 Moving a Selection To move a selected area 1 Choose a selection tool Select Select Region or Magic Wand 2 Move the mouse cursor inside the selection area 3 Hold down the left mouse button and drag the selection to the new place 4 Release the left mouse button to finish moving or press the Esc key on the keyboard to abort the operation To constrain movement to the horizontal or vertical direction hold down the Suirt key after pressing the left mouse button and drag the mouse You can move the selected area by one pixel using the arrow keys Copying and Pasting a Selection To copy a selection into another application or into another image use the Copy and Paste commands from the Edit menu With the Copy command you can place a copy of the selection area onto the Clipboard making it available to any application that can read bitmap images The Paste command reads bitmap images from the Clipboard and places them into the current editing field The Cut command combines Copy and Delete operations so a copy of the selection is placed on the Clipboard but the selection is deleted Brush Tool The Brush is a wide version of pencil and is used for drawing You select the brush shape in the Brushes panel Diameter is the brush shape diameter in pixels The greater the value the wider the brush shape will be Hardness is the degree of diffusion of the brush edges The greater the valu
36. e cursor will change to EF The new selection will be added to the previously selected area To subtract from the selection hold down the Axr key or use the Subtract from selection button in the Tool Options panel The cursor will change to The new selection will be subtracted from the previously selected area To subtract from the selection hold down ALrT Su1F or use the Intersect with selection button in the Tool Options panel The cursor will change to F Only the common area of the new and previous selection will be selected To deselect the area Crri click inside the area or use the Deselect command in the Edit menu Magic Wand Tool The easiest selection tool is the Magic Wand It automatically detects the area to select by its color attributes and creates a freehand selection It is very useful in selecting a glyph shape To select a non white area of an image 1 Select the Magic Wand tool in the Tools toolbar 2 Move the mouse cursor over the glyph that you want to select 3 Click the left mouse button to select the glyph Hold down the Suirt key to add a new selection to the current selection or hold down the ALT or ALT SuH1FT key to subtract from the selection To deselect the area Crri click inside the selected area or use the Deselect command in the Edit menu The Magic Wand tool has one additional option in the Tool Options panel Tolerance io gl It is called Tolerance Its value can be chan
37. e last operation in creating a font from an image is to place the split glyphs into the font To place glyphs into a font 1 Inthe Image window select the character cells using the Cell tool that you want to place into your font You need not select the cells for placing if you are going to place all the cells defined in the image 2 Choose the Place Into Font command in the Image menu or click on the Export button on the Workflow toolbar C a oe Open Separate Automatically assign i Start From O0 1 hes Glyph names will be automatically generated From Unicode codepoints Skip empty cells Alace all cells Cancel 66 By choosing the Unicode indexes option in the Automatically assign dropdown list you make the program assign Unicode codepoints to new glyphs It is also useful to enter the start value in the Start from field Note that you must enter the start value in hexadecimal format ScanFont will automatically assign names to glyphs by the assigned Unicode codepoints By choosing the Name template option in the Automatically assign dropdown list you can control the naming of exported glyphs Sometimes it may be useful to enter the prefix and suffix values in the corresponding fields Note that you can see the sample name at the right Automatically assign Hame template k Start from Hesadecimal Sample unil cap Prefix Digits Suffix By choosing the N
38. e outline representations used in digital scalable fonts assign the characters to their proper place in the font and transfer all that information to an outline font editor Outline Font Editor As you know ScanFont has no outline font editing features so you need another program to accept outline glyphs from ScanFont We call programs that can accept data from ScanFont or other sources Outline font editing Applications FontLab Studio AsiaFont Studio and TypeTool are programs that can establish communication with ScanFont accept data in outline and bitmap form and report to ScanFont the results of the data transfer so it can react properly Please note that you must have one of the listed applications installed together with ScanFont in order to create outline fonts You can customize the communication options on the Outline font editor page of the Tools gt Options dialog Outline font editor gt Trace outlines f no outlines Sek me every time Fontlab outline font editor such as AsiaFont Studio FontLab Studio or Type ool i required if you want to export scalable fonts Export outline font into WFE file See the detailed description of these options in the ScanFont Options section on page 152 If you do not have any of the listed applications installed you still can choose to export outlines into VFB file check the Export outline font into VFB file option 65 Placing Characters into a Font Th
39. e the more diffused the brush edges will be This option obviously does nothing in a plain black amp white image Roundness is the form of the brush shape If the roundness is zero the brush is rectangular The higher the value the rounder the brush Here are examples of brushes of different roundness Angle defines the angle of the brush tip It is applicable only to non round brushes If the angle is zero the brush shape is horizontal A positive angle turns the brush shape clockwise A negative value turns the brush shape counter clockwise Here are examples of different brush angles 31 32 Changing the Roundness and the Angle you can get calligraphic brushes of different shapes To use the Brush tool 1 Select the Brush tool in the Tools toolbar and a color in the palette 2 Set the brush diameter roundness angle and hardness in the Brushes panel 3 Draw brush strokes by clicking on and dragging the mouse 4 Ifyou want to cancel a stroke while drawing press the Esc key while dragging the mouse Tip To draw a straight line with the Brush click once at the line beginning and then Suirt click on at the line end Brushes Panel You can define several different brushes and place them in the Brushes panel To make the Brushes panel visible select the Brushes Panel command in the View menu e o z 25 25 O iz Diameter Angle 0 FAoundness 100 E Hardness To add a new b
40. ed in this case Sometimes you may need to change the default options for output in the source application s preferences dialog For example in Illustrator you should switch on the AICB option in the Options Files amp Clipboard settings To import an EPS file into ScanFont 1 Select the Open command in the File menu 2 Inthe Open File dialog box that appears select the eps file that you want to open and click on Open 3 Ifthe imported image contains outlines ScanFont will present the following dialog This dialog allows you to control the final image dimensions on import You may but do not have to change the width and or the height of your image before it opens in the new Image window Importing an Image from the Clipboard Various programs that deal with bitmap images can exchange information by using the Clipboard If you select and copy an image from such a program it can be imported into ScanFont As with image files ScanFont can import either black amp white or color images through the Clipboard Importing the Clipboard s contents into ScanFont 1 Run your image editing application open and select the image that you want to import into ScanFont and Copy it onto the Clipboard 2 Switch to ScanFont and select the New command from the File menu You will see the following dialog box Hew image width EE L__ Height 50 Linked Colors and grays Color Mode Color Colors Milio
41. ed trademark of International Business Machines Corporation Other brand or product names are the trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders THIS PUBLICATION AND THE INFORMATION HEREIN IS FURNISHED AS IS IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE WITHOUT NOTICE AND SHOULD NOT BE CONSTRUED AS A COMMITMENT BY FONTLAB LTD FONTLAB LTD ASSUMES NO RESPONSIBILITY OR LIABILITY FOR ANY ERRORS OR INACCURACIES MAKES NO WARRANTY OF ANY KIND EXPRESS IMPLIED OR STATUTORY WITH RESPECT TO THIS PUBLICATION AND EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ANY AND ALL WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY FITNESS FOR PARTICULAR PURPOSES AND NONINFRINGEMENT OF THIRD PARTY RIGHTS This document was created by Fonitlab Ltd http Awww fontlab com Contents CONTENTS INTRODUCTION About this Manual System Requirements Getting Started PREPARING IMAGES Scanning an Image Preparation of the Source Image Placing Paper with an Image into the Scanner Scanning an Image Importing an Image Importing EPS Importing an Image from the Clipboard Creating an Empty Image BASIC IMAGE EDITING Changing Image Colors Changing Image Size Basic Tools Select Tool Moving a Selection Copying and Pasting a Selection Brush Tool Rectangle and Ellipse Tools Zoom Tool Basic Operations Scale Rotate 11 12 13 16 17 18 19 21 Rotate 90 CW Rotate 180 and Rotate 90 CCW Removing Background Brightness Contrast SPLITTING AN IMAGE Autosplitting Algorithms Customizing
42. efine those glyphs that will be placed into your font It consists of the following parts and controls e Editing Field e Color Palette e Current color box e Scroll Bars e Rulers e Size dropdown list e Zoom in and Zoom out buttons The Tools toolbar becomes active when the Image window is open 75 76 The tools are divided into three groups e selection and drawing tools e tools for working with character cells e the Eye Dropper and Zoom tools The Tool Options panel also becomes available Select tool a ola amp The panel s title depends on the currently selected tool All toolbars can be switched on and off in the View gt Toolbars menu To switch on off the rulers use the Rulers command in the View menu Some commands available in the Image window can be selected from the context menu To open the context menu right click anywhere in the Image window Editing Field Contents After you open or scan a picture the editing field of the Image window contains nothing but the opened or scanned image Later it may show more of the elements that are described here E3 Image C Test Fonts SF Imagestall pne Sel aot a ana n a ananas i aranana n a a ntaa aiaa 200 300 40 500 B00 700 LILILIILI LEiLIILILILLI LILILILILILLI LIiLILIILLI LILIILILILILI LILII The colors of these elements can be customized on the Glyph and Image Window page of the Tools gt Options dialog box Cells You will
43. es are treated as the boundaries S between the glyphs but will not be added to the glyphs shapes Table Eiivil 7TlAlj The image is the same as without ae oe above but without vertical borders Flo O 1 O 4IDZ and horizontal lines All the f 7D 16 De cells are of equal size Gig f Ul 2 a Book The cells with separated simple ab C d E F glyphs are of the same height but have different advance widths The cells 7 produced by this algorithm r S u cannot overlap each other p q so overlapping shapes will occupy one cell which will need to be cut manually later anit g oo Book An advanced heuristic Bae ToO ee A a daaaad banaa OOO smart J q h d f F algorithm producing cells mm that can overlap and have _ different heights and 7 m e E Ta ie advance widths It is based a ST L on the principle of the gl g magic wand areas selection 47 4 Check the Skip spots that are less than option and enter the value if needed This option when checked does not treat spots that are below the limit that you enter as glyph shapes or their parts Such spots are ignored by the algorithm helping you to avoid speckles of noise that cannot be removed by other operations 5 Check the Automatically detect global baselines option if needed The autosplit algorithm will locate all the strings and determine the baseline s position in each string automatically If outlines are
44. eyboard shortcuts 51 161 customization 148 Knife tool 51 Line tool 102 Magic Wand tool 91 Median Noise 124 Opaque mode 93 operation Custom Filter 127 Emboss 119 Enhance 122 Find Edges 129 Gaussian Blur 121 Median Noise 124 Reduce Noise 123 Rotate 39 Sharpen 125 Smart Blur 120 Soften 126 outline 18 creating 130 deleting 130 filling with color 130 rasterizing 130 outline font editor 65 outlines 45 Pencil tool 101 pixel size 26 Pixels tracing 130 Polygon tool 103 Preparation of the Source Image 16 Rectangle tool 35 103 Reduce Noise 123 162 resampling 26 resolution changing 26 Rotate 39 scale bar 57 scale factor 57 Select Region tool 90 Select tool 29 89 Selecting 105 selection copying 30 92 deleting 94 moving 30 92 Sharpen 125 126 sidebearing 158 Smart Blur 120 Soften 125 126 splitting editing 51 splitting data saving and restoring 56 Tablet Options 31 101 Text tool 104 Tool Options panel 31 87 91 93 101 toolbar Tools 51 transparency 93 Transparent mode 93 TypeTool 65 Unicode 64
45. font is exported others are ScanFont only and are used to help you work with the image Below is the list of all the layers that you can see in the Image window Bitmap Main layer containing the bitmap image Grid Shows regular grid in the editing field in large zoom modes Outline Shows image outline layer it is usually empty ey Baseline Shows baselines Image Cells Shows cell rectangles in a split image es Contour Masks Shows cell mask in a split image You can control the layers appearance and features with the View gt Show Layers menu If you frequently need to switch some layers on and off you can drag the View gt Show Layers menu and convert it to a toolbar VIEW VIEW Show Layers nn Show Layers ae Grid Transparency j Transparency j Outline Toolbars BS Baseline Toolbars Brushes Panel lt Brushes Panel Et Image Cells Palette Panel FE Palette Panel aa Contour Masks lt Info Panel Info Panel Tool Options Panel Tool Options Panel s Rulers Rulers ZoomIn Ctrlt Nurn ZoomIn Cktrl Nurn zoom Out Ctril zoom Out Ctrl The View gt Transparency menu contains the following options As small grid Shows image transparency as small grid As medium grid Shows image transparency as medium grid As large grid Shows image transparency as large grid As color Shows image transparency as color background Select color Allows you to choose color for image transparency Choose Trans
46. g buttons between toolbars or toolbars and menus 151 152 ScanFont Options This section is very important since it is referenced from many other sections of the Manual Most of the features behavior import and export algorithms of ScanFont are customizable in the Options dialog box We encourage you to experiment with the settings and adapt them to your preferences However note that the authors have carefully chosen the factory settings so if you do not feel like poking around the Options in most cases you will be fine with the defaults To open the Options dialog box select the Options command in the Tools menu Options General Interface options Image Window Image to Font Conversion C Create new document at startup Outline Font Editor The dialog structure is quite simple There is a list of pages combined in categories on the left the contents of the currently selected page on the right and some buttons on the bottom You will notice that the structure of this dialog bears resemblance to the structure of the Font Info dialog To select a page use the list on the left B General Glyph and Image Window Image to Font Conversion Outline Font Editor Select a page and you will see its contents appear at the right of the list Yiew options gt arid Starting From zoom S 1 Ww Outline Outline display Show nodes cal Selected cel cell mask You can browse pages continuously by
47. ganized to cover all the functions in their usual sequence Preparing Images This chapter will help you reduce the time needed to get quality results with ScanFont by showing you how to properly prepare a source image for scanning It also describes all the possible methods of importing an image into ScanFont Basic Image Editing If a source image needs editing automatic or manual this chapter gives you some basic tips and examples Splitting an Image After your image is imported and edited it is then time to divide it into individual characters Usually ScanFont does this automatically but if manual editing is needed this chapter will help you Creating Characters This chapter explains how to create characters from the prepared and separated image and export their outlines to an outline font editing application Advanced Image Editing This chapter describes all image editing tools and operations in details and gives a description of all the editing windows and panels ScanFont User Interface This chapter covers the basic definitions of the ScanFont user interface and its customization All ScanFont options are discussed here as well System Requirements The Windows version of ScanFont requires one of the following hardware and software configurations A PC computer capable of running one of the following versions of Windows Windows 2000 Windows XP or Windows Vista with one of these operating systems installed
48. ge transparent or opaque when it is moved around the editing field Click on the Transparent button in the Tool Options panel if you want the white area of the selection not to cover the underlying color dots when the selection moves aes saps aga apis awa a ee ee ee ee Se eS S 87 88 Click on the Opaque button if you want the white area of the selection to overlap color areas of the underlying image Seer ea a RNA ee ee ee ee ee eK eS You can change these options at any time not just before making a selection The following selecting mode buttons olg allow you to modify the selected area i e to add or to subtract from the selection Any selection action can be undone by the Undo command of the Edit menu Select Tool Use the Select tool to outline a rectangular area and display it with a grid To select a rectangular part r 1 1 Choose the Select tool in the Tools toolbar 2 Put the mouse cursor on one of the corners of the rectangle that you want to select 3 Hold down the left mouse button and move the mouse cursor to the opposite corner of the area that you want to select 4 Release the left mouse button Tip To temporarily switch to the Select tool while another tool is active hold down the CTRL key on the keyboard To add to the selection hold down the Suirtr key or use the Add to selection button in the Tool Options panel The cursor will change to The
49. ged in the range from 0 to 100 When tolerance is equal to 0 the Magic Wand will select pixels precisely of one color only The greater the tolerance value is the larger the area that will be selected by the Magic Wand This option is of course not useful with black amp white images All values except 100 will lead to selection of only the black pixels in this case 91 92 Operations on a Selection Selection is used to choose part of the image on which to apply transformations In this section we will discuss methods of transforming selected areas Moving a Selection To move a selected area 1 Choose a selection tool Select Select Region or Magic Wand 2 Move the mouse cursor inside the selection area 3 Hold down the left mouse button and drag the selection to the new place 4 Release the left mouse button to finish moving or press the Esc key on the keyboard to abort the operation To constrain movement to the horizontal or vertical direction hold down the Suirt key after pressing the left mouse button and drag the mouse You can move the selected area by one pixel using the arrow keys Transparent and Opaque Modes There are two drawing modes you can use when moving selections Opaque mode you can move the entire selection including black and white areas that work together as an object In this case the whole selection overlaps the underlying image Transparent mode this works only on the black parts
50. h appears if you right click on a menu toolbar or toolbar dock area Customize The Customize dialog box consists of several pages Commands List of all the available commands grouped into several categories Toolbars Customization of toolbars There is an option to create new toolbars Tools On this page you can connect an external program to a menu item in ScanFont s Tools menu Keyboard Customization of keyboard shortcuts Menu Customization of menus While the Customize dialog box is open all interface elements are in editable mode so you can simply drag drop buttons and menu items between different toolbars You can also customize the appearance of menu items and toolbar buttons 139 140 Customizing Toolbars To move a button within a toolbar click the left mouse button on it drag it to the new location and drop it If you drag the button slightly further to the right a separator bar will be added between it and the previous button Standard To move a button to another toolbar drag drop it there To copy a button hold down the CTRL key while you drag the button To remove a button from a toolbar drag it out of the toolbar Standard In ScanFont there is very little difference between a menu and a toolbar so you can re arrange copy or remove menu items just like you do with toolbar buttons View Show Layers d Transparency d Toolbars d Brushes Panel Paletke Panel
51. have to reposition the baseline in every glyph Using baselines in the Image Window can save you a lot of time as many glyphs are already aligned there That is why we recommend that you align glyphs in strings when you prepare an original image ScanFont automatically detects the positions of all baselines when using the Separate Shapes operation It analyses glyphs cells and tries to find the best position for the baselines If you want to change the positions of the baselines first make them visible To make baselines visible in the Image Window select the Baseline item in the View gt Show Layers menu To move a baseline 1 Select the Cell oh tool in the Tools toolbar 2 Position the mouse cursor on the baseline the cursor changes to bed 3 Hold down the left mouse button and drag the baseline where you want it to go Release the left mouse button to place the baseline in the new position D To let ScanFont automatically detect the positions of all baselines again without performing autosplitting 1 Select the Cell tool 2 Make sure none of the cells selected 3 Select the Search Again command in the Image gt Baseline menu To set the position of a baseline for a string of cells 1 Select the Cell tool 2 Select the string of cells by Suirr clicking on or rectangular selection 3 Select the Search Again command in the Image gt Baseline menu 61 62 There are some additional commands
52. he standard color palette click on the 8 button if available The Palette panel view changes L The button is not available when thousands or millions of colors are used The contents of the Palette panel when the J button is pressed depend on the current image color mode 99 100 Image Transparency You can create images and draw glyphs with transparent colors Transparency mode is not available in black amp white images only When you open an Image window there is an element in it not found in black amp white mode the Transparency Palette This palette resides above the Color Palette at the top of the Image window BF TEST FONTS BM DBK Sa SPaaaaaa a a 100 150 200 250 300 ee ee ee DAV SMI ILE HER AR GR ons gt faa ad 4 The Transparency Palette can be used along with the Color Palette You can think of transparency opacity as an additional color attribute Every pixel of an image can be more or less transparent To set transparency for the current color move the mouse cursor to the Transparency Palette the cursor will change to the Eye Dropper and click the left mouse button on the amount of transparency opacity you want Or hold the left mouse button and drag the cursor left and right until the transparency you need is selected and then release the left mouse button The selected transparency will be marked in the palette with a small black line or rectangle If the Info panel
53. ility to adjust the scale factor for each of the cells individually or for the whole image To declare or edit the scale factor for the cells of an image 1 Click on the Set Scale button th on the Tools toolbar 2 The scale bar will appear on the image 6 l I l l I I I OOO OOS Se The scale bar is equal to 100 of the font height A special highlighted mark on the scale bar is 70 because usually the height of the uppercase glyphs equals 70 of the font height 3 Select the cell or a group of cells for which you will set the scale factor and click on the Auto button in the Tool Options panel 57 58 If the cell has a baseline the scale bar s zero point is aligned to the cell s baseline position E E E If you are not satisfied with the results of the scale factor s automatic detection it can be adjusted manually To do this position the scale bar so that its length equals the font height To move the scale bar position the mouse cursor on it not too close to an end The mouse cursor will change to gt Hold down the left mouse button and drag the scale bar to its new place Release the left mouse button to finish To position the ends of the scale bar position the mouse cursor on the end that you want to move The mouse cursor will change to gt Hold down the left mouse button and drag the scale bar s end Release the left mouse button to finish To keep the scale bar vertic
54. in the Image gt Baselines menu Here is their meaning Set To Cell s Bottom This command sets the selected cell s baseline or all baselines if no cell is selected to the cell s bottom border This is the same as clearing the cell s baseline Align To Top This command sets all the baselines of the selected cells to the position of the highest baseline Align To Middle This command sets all the baselines of the selected cells to the position of the calculated average value Align To Bottom This command sets all the baselines of the selected cells to the position of the lowest baseline Auto Align This command sets all the baselines of the selected cells to the automatically calculated position Other Cell Commands To create a new cell based on the selected area of your image 1 Using one of the Selection tools select the image portion 2 Choose the Make Cell from Selection command in the Image menu To select the glyph s shape of a cell 1 Using the Cell tool select the cell 2 Choose the Make Selection from Cell command in the Image menu To set the cell size to the size of the glyph s shape 1 Using the Cell tool select the cell 2 Select the Detect Bounding Boxes command from the Image menu 63 Creating Characters When we know almost everything about the characters in an image it is then time to put them into a font This means that ScanFont must convert the bitmap images of the characters into th
55. ined options changing from Very tight to Very loose When you select one of these easy options in the dropdown list ScanFont will automatically adjust all the tracing parameters The tighter the option you choose the more accurate the tracing will be In other words the outline will be closer to the original bitmap image This is the first law of autotracing The second law is that the tighter the option you choose the more nodes you will get on the outline More nodes mean more time and larger font files Usually the Normal option will be the best If you find that the Normal autotracing option does not work for you you can try the other tracing options listed in the Trace Preset dropdown list Glyph pixel size Normal Tight Normal Normal Normal 71 72 Advanced Trace Options You can customize the autotracer parameters with the more detailed options below the Trace Preset dropdown list Trace tolerance Allows you to change the distance between the generated outline and the edge of the original bitmap Curve fit quality Allows you to change the accuracy of curve fitting in the generated outline Straighten angle Defines the angle between two lines within which the autotracer will replace several lines with one line Tracer may generate This option active by default allows the autotracer to curves generate curves Tracer should generate This option active by default forces the autotracer to extreme points on insert no
56. is open you can see the numeric values of different pixels opacity Zero means the pixel is fully transparent 255 means it is fully opaque The transparency mode can be applied to all drawing tools used for image editing Even the Eraser tool can erase pixels partially gt Tip The Text tool can draw with white color in this mode Pencil Tool The Pencil is the simplest drawing tool in ScanFont It draws a one pixel wide line and can be used to set or clear individual pixels The Pencil tool can be used at any zoom but it is easier to use it at zoom levels of 5 1 or greater To set or clear an individual pixel on a glyph move the mouse cursor onto the pixel you want to edit and click on the mouse button This sets a pixel to the current color Another click on the same pixel clears the pixel To draw a thin line with the current color press the mouse button and drag the mouse You can draw a straight line by clicking on a beginning node and then clicking on sequential final nodes while holding down the SHIFT key Press the Esc key on the keyboard while drawing to abort drawing a line Brush Tool The Brush is a wide version of pencil See the description of the tool in the Brush Tool section on page 31 Eraser Tool The Eraser tool may be used to clear portions of the image As with the brush tool you may set diameter roundness angle and hardness of the eraser in the Brushes panel Tablet options affect the Era
57. is operation does not work with black amp white images 43 Splitting an Image After you edit an image and before you create a font you must split the image into separate shapes When characters appear on paper or ina computer stored bitmap image they are not characters anymore They are nothing more than a collection of black or color spots of various shapes To restore fonts from an image ScanFont must separate the image of each character from the images of other characters and put this character in the proper position in the collection of glyphs that is called a font Because there are differences between the shapes of the same character in different fonts ScanFont cannot automatically recognize characters like Optical Character Recognition OCR programs do OCR programs are oriented to recognize a limited number of fonts and use advanced lexical based algorithms to minimize recognition errors by trying to understand words not just separate characters In ScanFont we usually do not have words just a collection of characters in any order It is impossible for us to create a recognition algorithm that will understand characters in ScanFont But we have created tools that simplify manual splitting of glyph shapes and have included a special feature that can automatically locate glyph shapes if they are printed in a known sequence Our automatic separation feature usually produces very good results requiring few or no manual cor
58. k red lines in the editing field Characters outlines cannot be edited in ScanFont but they can be exported or ignored later during the Place Into Font operation Outlines can be removed with the Tools gt Outline gt Clear command Changing the View in the Image Window To change the view in the editing field of the Image window use the Scroll bars Size dropdown list Zoom buttons and the View menu Scrolling You can scroll the editing field using the Scroll Bars The same action can be done by the Hand tool which becomes available when you hold down the SPACEBAR key The top and left rulers can be switched on and off by using the Rulers command in the View menu Zooming You can define magnification or reduction of the editing field of an image with the Size dropdown list There are 26 zoom modes available in the list The Zoom in and Zoom out buttons allow you to change the zoom mode of the editing field by one level at a time ou Ja a The zoom factor called Fit to window will automatically select the actual scale factor to fit the image in the window This command is available in the Size dropdown list and in the View menu The maximum zoom in is limited to 1600 magnification and the minimum reduction is 10 To magnify or reduce part of a glyph select the Zoom tool described later in this chapter 79 80 View Menu In ScanFont every image contains several editing layers Some of them are used when the
59. k the Add Noise option to add some noise to a solid color you have selected You may choose to add different amount of noise and apply it to this or that component of RGB If you choose the Picture mode click on the Browse button and choose the PNG or TIFF pattern file to be applied to the image Colorize Assign by Opacity had Assign mode Picture Picture File CAProgram E Files FontLablScanFontS Patterns gald pn Slignment whole k You may choose any image that can be produced with your image editing applications even your latest digital photo Select the appropriate Alignment in the corresponding menu The following variants of aligning the pattern to the image are available Random Whole Top Left Top Centered Top Right Centered Left Centered Centered Right Bottom Left The image is filled with the pattern randomly The image is filled with the pattern scaled to the image size The pattern fills the image aligned to the pattern s top left corner The pattern fills the image aligned to the pattern s top edge and centered horizontally The pattern fills the image aligned to the pattern s top right corner The pattern fills the image aligned to the pattern s left edge and centered vertically The image is filled with the pattern centered vertically and horizontally in the image The p
60. l for 196 Whenever the text is printed or displayed on the screen the computer looks inside the font file and finds out which character codes correspond to which glyphs so that the series of abstract character codes can be visualized using some specific images of letters digits and other symbols Every font includes a mapping of character codes to glyphs this mapping is called the font encoding sometimes encoding vector or in this manual just encoding These days most font formats use the Unicode Standard as basis for their font encoding but it is possible to produce fonts that are encoded using the older codepages It is even possible to have several different encoding vectors in one font so that both old and modern applications can work with it Some More Definitions Advance width the distance between the left and right margins sidebearings of a glyph Sometimes it is called glyph width Alphabet Script the collection of characters used to write a particular language The alphabet as North Americans and English know it is the script for the English language Latin script is the script for most European South American and some Asian languages Cyrillic script is used in all Slavonic languages Russian Ukrainian Serbian Bulgarian and many others Note that a script usually includes many more characters than necessary for the one language Latin script for example includes more than 200 charac
61. mart Blur The Smart Blur command blurs the image It is similar to the Gaussian Blur command described later but it tries not to blur the image edges To perform this operation select the Smart Blur command in the Tools gt Filter menu The Smart Blur dialog will appear Smart Blur Use the Level slider to define the blur degree You can see the preview of the image in the preview field of the dialog To see the original image press and hold down the Crrt key Click on the OK button to apply the transformation or Cancel to abort You can use this command several times but be careful to check the effect after every use Before After X Note This operation does not work with black amp white images Gaussian Blur The Gaussian Blur command blurs the image using the Gaussian algorithm To perform this operation select the Gaussian Blur command in the Tools gt Filter menu The Gaussian Blur dialog will appear Gaussian Blur Radius ai 0 1 pixel Use the Radius slider to define the blur degree View the preview of the image in the preview field of the dialog To see the original image press and hold down the CTRL key Click on the OK button to apply the transformation or Cancel to abort You may use this command several times but be careful to check the effect after every use Before After Use the Undo command to undo the operation X Note This operation d
62. menu to transform a selected area of an image If you have a selection within the image transformation commands are applied to the selection If there is no selection the commands are applied to the entire image All these operations will be discussed later in the Operations section on page 107 Drawing You can draw a new glyph image or modify an existing one using the drawing tools ScanFont s bitmap editor includes the following drawing tools Pencil Draws thin 1 pixel lines or sets or clears individual pixels Very useful in the Zoom In mode Brush sf Main drawing and painting tool Draws strokes of selected width and shape Eraser lt Clears areas of an image Fill y Fills closed areas with selected color Line Draws straight lines Polygon f Draws filled or unfilled polygons Rectangle jf Draws filled or unfilled rectangles and squares Ellipse Draws filled or unfilled circles and ellipses Text T Enters text The default color for drawing is black You can change the current color by selecting one in the Color Palette All the tools except the Text tool may draw with any color While drawing you can change your drawing tool temporarily e to the Select tool by holding down the Crrt key or e tothe Eye Dropper tool by holding down the Axr key or e tothe Hand tool by holding down the Spacesar key or e tothe Zoom In tool by holding down the CrrL Spacesar keys or e tothe Zoom Out tool by holding down
63. n 129 130 Outline Operations Operations from the Tools menu are applied not only to the bitmap images but also to the outline layers if not empty Operations from the Tools gt Adjust and Tools gt Filter menus do not affect outlines Additionally there are several special operations in the Tools gt Outline menu for managing the image outline layer Use them to manually create delete fill or rasterize outlines To create an outline in the image outline layer select the Trace Bitmap command in the Tools gt Outline menu ScanFont will autotrace the image accordingly to the options set in the Trace Options dialog described in the Tracing Options section of the Creating Characters chapter and place the contours on the outline layer To clear the contents of the outline layer select the Clear command in the Tools gt Outline menu The image outlines will be removed To replace the bitmap contents of the glyph select the Rasterize command in the Tools gt Outline menu The image contours will be rasterized and the new image will be created Note that color pixels will be replaced with black amp white in this case To fill the image outline with color pixels select the Fill command in the Tools gt Outline menu The Fill Outline dialog appears Fill Outline Fill color Opacity oT 255 Shit xo vfo piel Select color and opacity level enter the values of horizontal and or vertical shift if needed and click
64. n joao een PE EEE PETE EEE EEE Editing Splitting Data There are no perfect automatic algorithms Possible errors of the autosplit algorithm are 1 Iftwo glyphs touch or overlap each other too much they will be interpreted as a single glyph These cells must be split manually 2 Some multi part glyphs will be interpreted as being separate glyphs The split cells must be merged 3 The positions of some of the baselines may be inaccurate New baselines must be added or unnecessary baselines removed The tools for working with the split image are placed at the end of the Tools toolbar and have the following keyboard shortcuts EEF Ch GS th 51 52 Cell Tool The Cell tool is the main tool for working with the split image It is used to select and deselect cells for further operations on them Every cell in the split image will become a glyph in the font that is generated from that image To select a cell click on the Cell tool ch in the Tools toolbar and then click within the blue rectangle of the cell in the image Select more cells by shift clicking or dragging the mouse cursor while you hold down the left mouse button Use the Select All command in the Edit menu to select all the cells To deselect the selected cells one by one click on the mouse cursor within the red rectangle of the selected cell while holding down the Axr key To deselect all the cells click anywhere outside the cells or use the Deselect comm
65. new selection will be added to the previously selected area To subtract from the selection hold down the Axr key or use the Subtract from selection button in the Tool Options panel The cursor will change to T The new selection will be subtracted from the previously selected area To subtract from the selection hold down ALT SHIEFT or use the Intersect with selection button in the Tool Options panel The cursor will change to Te Only the common area of the new and previous selection will be selected To deselect the area click outside of the selected area or CrRL click inside the area or use the Deselect command in the Edit menu 89 90 Select Region Tool With the Select Region tool you can select areas of any shape The area may be selected on a point by point basis or by drawing a free hand line To select a free form part of an image 1 Choose the Select Region gt tool in the Tools toolbar 2 Position the mouse cursor on one of the points on the edge of the selection area 3 Hold down or click the left mouse button If you click the left down button you will add a new straight line to the selection polygon If you hold the left mouse button and drag the mouse you will draw a freehand line that will be added to the selection 4 Double click the left mouse button to finish the selection To add to the selection hold down the Suirt key or use the Add to selection button in the Tool Options panel Th
66. ns 32 bits Create new image using Clipboard s contents 19 20 Check that the Create new image using Clipboard s contents check box is switched on If this option is not enabled it means that you do not have a proper image in the Clipboard In the New Image section you will see the size of the image that ScanFont will read from the Clipboard If you want you can change the image dimensions to resample the imported image In the Color Mode dropdown list select Black amp White Grayscale or Color to change color information for the image Select the number of colors as well Click on the OK button and you will see a new Image window with the Clipboard contents Creating an Empty Image Sometimes you may not have an image ready only an idea You can create an image right in ScanFont using bitmap editing tools that are of the same quality as in the most well known image editing programs But first you have to create an empty image window To create an empty image 1 Select the New command from the File menu or click on the New button on the Workflow toolbar In the dialog box that appears switch off the Create new image using Clipboard contents check box if it is enabled Enter the dimensions of the new image in pixels in the edit boxes in the New image area Be sure to create the image area big enough to include all the glyphs you want to draw If you create the image area too small and later during edi
67. ocumentation to see whether it will work with the TWAIN interface If your scanner cannot work through TWAIN you can use the program that comes with your scanner to scan the image and save it into one of the formats that ScanFont can read If you can place the image onto the Clipboard using the Copy command in any image editing application you can get it from there and paste it into ScanFont as a new image If you do not have a prepared font image but are ready to create it using the mouse or a digitizing tablet you can start from a clear image and draw it using ScanFont s image editing tools 12 Scanning an Image There are several steps that you must perform to prepare and scan your image The scanning stage is very critical for the quality of the resulting characters in the font so please read this section carefully and take the time to experiment with your scanner and adjust the scanning sequence for the best results Preparation of the Source Image To get best results we recommend that you prepare a source image on paper with the following characteristics in mind The paper must be white and smooth The images of characters or symbols that you want to place into a font must be large The real size of the symbols that you want to scan depends on the optical resolution of your scanner We recommend that the size of the symbols be at least 0 5 inch 1 25 cm in height If you want to get a very precise result you can prepa
68. oes not work with black amp white images 121 122 Enhance The Enhance command tries to detect unwanted pixels and remove them It is similar to the Reduce Noise command described later as it reduces noise thus improving the image appearance To enhance the image select the Enhance command in the Tools gt Filter menu The Enhance dialog will appear Enhance Level FOO lt qr 100 i 100 Use the Level slider to define the degree of unwanted pixels to remove This filter is good for scanned black amp white images too See also the examples of the Custom Filter usage described later on page 127 You will see the preview of the image in the preview field of the dialog To see the original image press and hold down the Crrt key You can use this command several times but be careful to check the effect after every use Before After Use the Undo command to undo the operation Reduce Noise The Reduce Noise operation makes the image less noisy To apply this operation select the Tools gt Filter gt Reduce Noise command The Reduce Noise dialog will appear Reduce Nowe Threshold by Luminosity p 110 sg pixels l Enter the Threshold method amount and the Area value in square pixels to define the best transformation parameters View the preview of the image in the preview field of the dialog To see the original image press and hold down the Crrt key The Threshold by p
69. of the selection Only the black areas in the selection will obscure the underlying image and the white areas will be completely transparent With true color images all pixels overlap each other according to their transparency attributes Dee a a en ca a a ee ee ee ee ee eS eS ee ee ee ee ee eS eS Opaque mode Transparent mode To select the Transparent or Opaque mode you must use the mode selection buttons in the Tool Options panel Hl Selects the Transparent mode a Selects the Opaque mode 93 94 Copying and Pasting a Selection To copy a selection into another application or into another image use the Copy and Paste commands from the Edit menu With the Copy command you can place a copy of the selection area onto the Clipboard making it available to any application that can read bitmap images The Paste command reads bitmap images from the Clipboard and places them into the current editing field The Cut command combines Copy and Delete operations so a copy of the selection is placed on the Clipboard but the selection is deleted Deleting a Selection To remove a selection from the image select the Delete command in the Edit menu or press the DEL key on the keyboard The selection will be removed and filled with white or transparency color Do not forget you can use the Undo command if you want to undo the deletion Transforming a Selection You can use the commands from the Tools
70. om left to right corresponds to zero angle When finished click on the OK button To abort the operation click on Cancel 39 40 Rotate 90 CW Rotate 180 and Rotate 90 CCW There are another three commands for rotation in the Tools gt Rotate menu Use Rotate 90 CW Rotate 180 and Rotate 90 CCW commands to rotate by the appropriate angle Before rotating After rotating After rotating 180 After rotating 90 CW 90 CCW If these commands are applied to the entire image outlines if any are rotated accordingly Use the Undo command if you want to undo the transformation Removing Background Sometimes it may be useful to clean up the color background of an image with glyph shapes For example you could scan a very old manuscript with a yellow or even brown background In order to get a font from this image all the glyph shapes have to be separated from their background To make this process easier try using the Remove Background command from the Tools gt Filter menu Remove Background es Fine Foor Treshold background removal mapping 41 42 Use the Mode dropdown list to select the base algorithm of the operation You can remove background By luminosity or By color You can try them all looking at the preview at the left to choose the best one The more contrast in the preview the better splitting result you will get There is also a special tool in the By color mode Click on
71. on the OK button The interior of the outline will be filled with the selected color with antialiasing This operation preserves the original pixels of the image that lay outside of the contours All the above outline operations can be applied to the whole image in the Image window or to the selection Note The content of the outline layer can be saved to the disk only in ScanFont document sf format or it can be exported to outline editing application 131 ScanFont User Interface Before talking about images fonts and the ScanFont features let s spend some time learning the ScanFont user interface The user interface of ScanFont is highly customizable This chapter discusses how you can custom tailor the ScanFont interface so it fits your needs best Note that throughout the book we will refer to menu commands toolbar buttons and keyboard shortcuts as they appear in the default user interface settings of ScanFont so keep this in mind if you have customized their location or appearance 134 Basic Terms First let us define some terms that are critical to understanding ScanFont and fonts in general Character The minimal atomic unit of writing with a clearly defined identity a part of the alphabet a letter a digit an ideogram a symbol Any image that can be recognized as having the same meaning represents the same character AAGAR All the images above represent the character A Please note that
72. onstrain the Scale bar alignment to vertical direction Use the Undo levels edit box to enter the number of undo levels The default value is 101 undoes Note that the more undo levels you want to use the more memory the program will require Switch the Constrain the Scale bar alignment option on to prevent the Scale bar from being slanted By default this option is off and you must hold down the Sutrt key on the keyboard to keep the Scale bar vertically or horizontally 155 156 Image Window Options The Glyph and Image Window page is used to customize the view and behavior of the Image window View Options Yiew options rid Starting From zoom S 1 we Outline Outline display Show nodes cal selected cel Cell mask You can change colors for some elements of the Image window Click on the corresponding color rectangles to change the color for grid outlines and cells Grid The gridlines are not part of the transparency grid They delimit pixels in all color modes when large zooming is selected il E Ea E F Fd EEN WE Red grid lines Select the starting zoom mode when the grid becomes visible Outline contour Besides the color of outline contours you can choose to Show nodes and or to show outline Thin or Thick Thin outline with nodes shown Thick outline without nodes shown 157 158 Image To Font Conversion The Image To Font Conversion page of the Tools gt
73. pacity value is replaced with the gray level in percents When a black amp white image is edited RGB values are not shown The bottom part of the Info panel contains the horizontal x and vertical y coordinates of the pixel under the mouse cursor The origin point has zero values and pixels are counted from the top left corner of the image The next pair of values show the width w and the height h of a selection if any There is another way to open the Info panel position the mouse cursor over the Current Color box in the Image window and hold down the left mouse button EF Image C Test Fonts 6 R i The information panel for the current color appears Drag the mouse outside this panel and release the left mouse button The Info panel will appear on the screen where the mouse button was released 83 84 Context Menu Some commands available in the Image window can be selected from the context menu To open the context menu right click anywhere in the editing field Here is a sample of the Image window context menu Change Color Separate Shapes Merge Cells Search Baselines Flace Into Font Here is what the commands mean Remove Opens the Remove Background dialog allowing you to clean Background up color image background Change Color Opens the Change Color Mode dialog for the current image Separate Shapes Starts autosplitting for the current image Merge Cells Merges two or more selec
74. parency gt As grid if you want to see a transparent background in the Image window Select the size of the grid from the Small grid Medium grid or Large grid choices in the View gt Transparency menu The size of the grid affects only the view of the editing field not the image itself To view the image background as colored select the Transparency gt As color command in the View menu The default color for transparency is white but you can change it using the Select Color command which brings up the standard Windows Select Color dialog in the View gt Transparency menu Changing the view of transparency does not affect the real transparency of drawing colors It defines only how the transparency is shown in the window You may choose to change other viewing options on the Glyph and Image Window page of the Tools gt Options dialog box described in the ScanFont Options section on page 152 With the View menu you can also show and hide toolbars rulers and panels 81 82 Info Panel When working with an image the Info panel may become useful To make it visible on the screen select the Info Panel command in the View menu A 103 a a 255 Ei E z5 8 3420 byw 19 Y 130 H BF The upper part of this panel contains color information for the pixel under the mouse cursor its RGB values and the opacity value 0 255 If you are editing an image that has no transparency layer less than with millions of colors the o
75. re bigger characters even one huge character on a page ScanFont can process such a character but our experiments have shown that characters bigger than mentioned above do not really improve the quality of the resulting outlines If you want to scan your signature write it as usual The more natural it is the better the result If you are preparing a font of your handwriting do not choose a thin pen A standard 0 7mm pen is best Never use a pencil The image will look contrasted on paper but not when scanned As a result you will get noise in the black areas of the image and holes in the characters strokes If you are creating a handwriting font try to align the characters on a baseline You can use a light yellow pen to draw lines before you write characters Low contrast yellow lines will not show up in a scanned image but they will help you to align characters properly The distance between each string of characters is not important but it must be large enough so the characters don t overlap ghijklm ghijklm abcdef abcdef Wrong Right 13 14 If you are not sure which shape of a character is best write several versions and then scan Later in ScanFont you can select the best version It is much better to have several versions of a symbol on one paper than to make an additional scan because even if the scanner settings are the same the position of the paper in the scanner will differ so the result will be differen
76. rections 46 Autosplitting Algorithms To autosplit an image into glyph shapes 1 Choose the Separate Shapes command in the Image menu or click on the Separate Shapes button on the Workflow toolbar Separation mask Threshold by Luminosity Inverted mode Separation algorithm Book smart a Skip spots that are less than 16 pixels Automatically detect global baselines Lo x cane 2 Ifyou are working with a color image use the Threshold by dropdown list and slider to define the boundaries between the white or whatever color paper and image pixels This option works similarly to the Threshold operation discussed later You will see the preview of the image changes in the left part of the dialog Actually the threshold does not change your image or its colors it is only needed to separate the future glyphs shapes from their background If you are working with a black amp white image you will see the short version of the dialog without the Separation mask section and preview Select the algorithm in the Separation Algorithm dropdown list ScanFont has four autosplitting algorithms to use on different types of images Here are descriptions with examples to illustrate the differences Table one i aT Bia OMe Aic 010 eie BE The image has an explicit with i table structure with cells of borders equal size separated by vertical and horizontal lines These lin
77. rform one of the operations only with the selected windows All other windows will be automatically minimized Use the Minimize button to minimize selected windows 85 86 Tools The tools in the Tools toolbar are used for bitmap image editing and are not available if the Image window is not active These tools are not used for outline layer editing To open the Tools toolbar select the View gt Toolbars gt Tools command You can easily switch between these tools by pressing the following keys on the keyboard ISIL IILL LT mexA SS Z NEOOT 7a Selecting You can select the entire editing field of the window by the Select All command in the Edit menu If you want to deselect any previously selected area use the Deselect command in the Edit menu To deselect the selected area and select the unselected area simultaneously use the Select Inverse command Additionally there are three selecting tools in the Tools toolbar Select tool Select Region tool and Magic Wand Any selected part of the bitmap can be moved around the editing field by dragging it It can be cut copied pasted and cleared by the corresponding choices in the Edit menu or buttons in the Standard toolbar All the selecting tools have common options which you can see in the Tool Options panel the View menu They are the Transparent selection and the Opaque selection You may need to switch between these options to make the selected part of an ima
78. rush to the top of the Brushes panel define the brush s shape at the bottom and click on the button in the panel The new brush will be added to the brushes list To remove a brush from the Brushes panel click on the brush in the list to select it and then click on the button in the panel The brush shape will be deleted from the brushes list To change the shape of a brush in the Brushes panel click on the brush in the list to select it define the brush s shape at the bottom and then click on the button in the panel The new parameters will be applied to the currently selected brush 33 34 Tablet Options If you have a digitizing tablet connected to your PC you may need to set up the tablet options Click on the button in the Tool Options panel to bring up the following Tablet Options dialog Tablet options Pen pressure iz Brush hardness Brush opacity You can customize the behavior of your digital pen in this dialog Check Size Hardness and Opacity options in an appropriate combination to define the results of pressing the digital pen Rectangle and Ellipse Tools These two tools are very similar in usage but differ in result The Rectangle tool is used to draw rectangles and squares and the Ellipse tool draws ellipses and circles To draw a rectangle or an ellipse 1 Select the appropriate tool O or in the Tools toolbar and a color in the palette Position the mouse cursor on one
79. se the Eye Dropper by selecting the tool in the Tools toolbar or by pressing and holding down the Arr key while another tool is active To make any color in the editing field the current color drag the lower edge of the mouse cursor lt to that color and click the left mouse button The color under the cursor becomes the current color for drawing tools If the Info panel is visible the digital RGB values of the current color appear in it You cannot undo this operation Zoom Tool See the description of the Zoom tool in the Zoom Tool section on page 36 Operations You can transform an open image or a selected part of an image using the commands from the Tools menu If there is no selection transformation commands are applied to the whole image If you select a part of an image transformations are applied to the selection Note Some commands are not available in the Tools menu if you are editing a black amp white image Some commonly used transformation commands have corresponding buttons in the Operations toolbar for easy access Operations The buttons in the Operations toolbar are Flip Horizontal ty Flips the image or selection horizontally Flip Vertical a Flips the image or selection vertically Scale EF Scales the image or selection Rotate 2 Rotates the image or selection by the given angle Rotate 180 sy Rotates the image or selection 180 degrees Rotate 90 CW Rotates the image or selection 90
80. see character cells blue rectangles around glyph images after you perform the image splitting procedure the Image gt Separate Shapes command One cell in your image represents one character in the future font You will be able to select cells with the Cell tool The selected cells change their color to red to let you see what is selected at any given time You can customize the colors of selected and not selected cells 77 78 Cell s mask The cell s mask is visible as a green contour The cell s mask outlines the part of the image that will be transferred to the tracing procedure during the Place Into Font operation In the simplest case the cell s mask is the boundary between the black glyph image and the white background but sometimes this may not include the whole glyph image You can remove the cell s mask with the Image gt Cell Mask gt Remove menu command The cell s rectangle will become the cell s mask in this case Note that the cell s mask is not the outline Baselines ScanFont s autosplitting algorithm automatically determines the character s baselines The baseline defines the vertical position of a character in a string So every cell gets its own baseline represented by the blue horizontal line in the editing field You may change the baseline s position by dragging it or with menu commands that we will describe later Outlines Sometimes when both bitmap and outline information are available you can see dar
81. ser tool as well Of course you can press the Esc key to abort the erasing process 101 102 Fill Tool The Fill tool is used to fill areas filled with one color It works similarly to the Magic Wand tool To fill an area filled with one color with the current color using the Fill tool 1 Select the Fill tool in the Tools toolbar and a color in the palette 2 Move the mouse cursor 2 to the area you wish to fill 3 Click the left mouse button to fill this area with the current color To fill a selection with the current color use the Edit gt Fill Selection command Line Tool This tool draws straight lines with the brush that you select in the Brushes panel To draw a straight line 1 Select the Line tool in the toolbar and a color in the palette 2 Position the mouse cursor at the beginning of the line 3 Hold down the left mouse button and drag the mouse to define a line 4 Hold down the Suirr key to constrain the line direction to 45 degree increments 5 Release the left mouse button to finish drawing the line or press the Esc key to abort Polygon Tool This tool can be used to draw closed polygons with the interior filled or empty As with all the other tools you can choose the current color in the Color Palette To draw a polygon 1 Select the Polygon tool Ix in the Tools toolbar 2 Position the mouse cursor on the first point of the polygon 3 To add a straight line segmen
82. sometimes identical images represent different characters A Latin A A Cyrillic A A Greek Alpha Characters are abstract beings without a particular strictly defined image Computers store characters in their memory using numerical codes A text file contains sequences of such codes that represent strings of characters Glyph The basic atomic element of a font the particular image that is being shown on screen or printed The glyph repertoire of a font is a collection of all glyphs contained in this particular font Typically one glyph is a graphical representation of one character However the same font can include several glyphs that are different graphical representations of the same character Also one glyph can represent several characters for example in a ligature Characters are the abstract conceptual components of a text while glyphs are the particular visual components of a text fixed in some form In addition to the visual appearance the glyph image a glyph also has some digital representation A glyph can be represented by a bitmap capable of reproducing the glyph image only in one specific size More commonly a glyph consists of outlines that are scalable so that they can reproduce the glyph image in any size Font A typeface is a particular artwork of an alphabet a set of glyphs that are designed with a common graphic idea in mind A font is a digital file or a few files that hol
83. t Do not overlap characters ScanFont includes advanced algorithms that can separate characters of any form but not when characters touch each other In ScanFont overlapping or touching characters are treated as just one character in a strange format Manual separation of overlapping characters is possible but is very time consuming Here is what we mean by touching and overlapping characters sample Wrong Right Placing Paper with an Image into the Scanner If you have a flatbed scanner place the paper with the image into the scanner If you have a hand held scanner prepare it for scanning We do not recommend that you use hand held scanners to prepare typographical fonts for ScanFont because this type of scanner is not precise enough But if you are just adding your signature to an existing font or creating a handwritten or pictorial font a hand held scanner is adequate It is very important to put the paper straight on the scanner The rotation of paper placed into a scanner even if only few degrees dramatically decreases the quality of the results you will get in ScanFont Try several times to make sure that the paper is aligned straight in the scanner 15 16 Scanning an Image To scan a paper based image in ScanFont 1 Select the Select Source command in the File gt Import menu 2 Select the scanner in the dialog box that appears 3 Prepare the image according to the recommendations in the Prepara
84. t by the drag drop method described earlier in this section 147 148 Customization of the Keyboard Open the Keyboard page of the Customize dialog box Customize Commands Toolbars Tools Keyboard Menu Options Category Fie Commands Current Keps Chose ChhO ae I Lt eee me Wee Memare Iper Save Save As Po Press New Shortcut Kep Description i Open an existing document In the left area of the page you can select the command which you want to customize Choose the commands category in the top list and the command itself in the list below On the right part of the page you will see the list of keyboard shortcuts currently defined for that command Current Keps The Remove command at the right of the list allows removal of one of the existing shortcuts To define a new keyboard shortcut select a command and position the cursor on the editing field below the Press New Shortcut Key label Press New Shortcut Rey ee When the caret is in position press the combination of keys that you want to assign A description of that combination will appear in the editing field and you can click on the Assign button to assign that combination to the currently selected command Click on the Reset All button to reset all changes back to ScanFont defaults 149 150 Links to External Programs Use the Tools page of the Customize dialog box to assign Windows
85. t the font You will see the font selection dialog box in which you can select the typeface style and point size of the text that you are drawing Font Font style rial Regular i a F Arial Black italic 20 F Arial Narrow Bold F Arial Rounded MT Bol Bold Italic F Arial Unicode MS F Baskerville Old Face we F Bauhaus 93 Sample AaBbYyZz Script Wester E This i an OpenType tont This same font will be used on both pour printer and your screen 4 Make your selection and click on the OK button 5 Type the letter or text that you want to draw in the glyph window You will see the text objects containing the text immediately appear in the glyph window while you are typing lt O UQ PF 5 6 You can work with the text object as with any selection Use the Text tool like any other selection tool to move or copy a text object Refer to the Selecting section on page 87 for information about selection tools 7 Choose a transparent or opaque mode for the text object in the Tool Options panel 8 Click the left mouse button anywhere outside the selection to accept the position of the text object and begin entering a new one 105 106 Other Tools Eye Dropper Tool The Eye Dropper is a tool for quick color selection from the colors already used in the drawing You can choo
86. t to a polygon click the left mouse button Then move the mouse to define the line segment and click the left mouse button again 4 To add a freehand segment to a polygon press down the left mouse button but do not release it and drag the mouse to draw the freehand segment Release the left mouse button to accept it 5 To finish drawing a polygon double click the left mouse button at the last point to be added 6 To abort drawing press the Esc key The polygon will be filled with the current color if the Fill interior check box in the Tool Options panel was checked Polygon tool Rectangle and Ellipse Tools See the description of these tools in the Rectangle and Ellipse Tools section on page 35 103 104 Text Tool With this tool which is a little more complex than the other drawing tools you can draw letters words or paragraphs of text using any font installed on your system This feature is very useful because it allows you to use any font as an original for further modifications You can draw letters with any color from the Color Palette except white To draw a string of text 1 Select the Text tool in the Tools toolbar and click on in the glyph editing field 2 You will see a panel for entering text Text Tool Grial at 13 pixels In this panel you can enter a line of text and choose the font that will be used to draw the text 3 Click on the Font button at the lower left corner to selec
87. ted cells Search Baselines Automatically detects the positions of all baselines in the split image Place Into Font Opens the Place Into Font dialog Using the Window Menu Sometimes you may want to open several images simultaneously The screen may become too crowded with windows The easiest way to manage open windows is to use the Window menu It contains some useful commands Cascade Organizes open windows in a cascade Tile horizontally Organizes windows like tiles on a rectangular floor Tile vertically Windows Opens the windows management dialog box Choose the Windows command and you will see a dialog box Windows Select window Activate Image C Test Fontet BF TEST FON TSSEMPGo0d image bmp Image C T est FontsSignatures O utlines4 eps OF Image CT est Fonts Signatures Sigh aker test eps Image CT est Fonts Signatures S ugnatureblack tif Image C Test Fonts Signatures szuch_1 tif T Image C Test Fonts Signatures Save Close Windows T estgray tif CAT est Fonts Signatures 7 tit Minimize Most of the dialog box is covered by the list of open windows Select one of the windows in the list and click on the Activate button to activate that window and move it to the top To close one or more windows select them in the list and click on the Close Window s button Select two or more windows in the list and click on Cascade Tile Horizontally or Tile Vertically to pe
88. ters BMP the standard graphics file format on Windows compatible computers EPS Encapsulated PostScript Image file format that supports both vector graphics and bitmap images FontLab format see VFB format GIF Graphic Interchange Format A common format for image files often used on the WWW Resolution is limited to 256 colors OpenType OpenType font format jointly developed by Microsoft and Adobe OpenType fonts can be TrueType flavored we call them OpenType TT fonts and PostScript flavored OpenType PS fonts Both are Unicode encoded and support special features like swashes contextual forms ligatures etc PNG Portable Network Graphics A standard graphics file format designed for WWW to replace the GIF file format RGB the color model in which red green and blue are combined in various ways to reproduce other colors on the monitor 137 138 TIFF Tagged Image File Format An uncompressed image file format for PC and Macintosh Transparency additional information in color images allowing color pixels to be more or less transparent so the background becomes partially visible TrueType a font format using quadratic b spline mathematics to describe glyph outlines Developed and promulgated by Microsoft and Apple Computer We use the term Windows TrueType OpenType TT for Windows TrueType fonts here in the Manual Windows TrueType fonts containing embedded bitmaps are called OpenType SBIT fonts Type 1 Adobe
89. the CTRL ALT SPACEBAR keys Note If there is a selected area anywhere in the editing field drawing will take place only within this selected area 95 96 Selecting Colors The image editor in ScanFont is actually a powerful color image retouching module As in any image editing application you can select drawing colors in color palettes The ScanFont color palette resides at the top of the Image window There are three ways to set the current color in the Image window e With the Color Palette e With the Color dialog box e and with the Eyedropper tool To set the current color with the Color Palette move the mouse cursor to the palette bar the cursor will change to the Eye Dropper cursor and click the left mouse button over the color you need The selected color will be shown in the Current Color box To set the current color with the Color dialog box double click on the palette bar or the Current Color box The standard Windows Color dialog box will open Select the color you need in this dialog and click on the OK button The selected color will be shown in the Current Color box This method is better if you want to set a precise color by entering its numeric RGB values To set the current color with the Eyedropper tool select this tool in the Tools toolbar or press the ALT key on the keyboard position the mouse cursor over the image and click the left mouse button The color of the pixel you clicked on will be shown in
90. the corresponding dropdown lists You may want ScanFont to generate a custom color table for your image This is possible in 4 16 and 256 color modes only when you change the number of colors in the image Select one of the available Adaptive color tables Color T able 56 Colors wt Matte color ae Adaptive poor gu lt Adaptive normal quality If you are going to make a black amp white image from a color or grayscale image you must define the threshold parameter for conversion Color Mode Black amp White See the description of this parameter in the Threshold section You can view the preview of the image in the preview field of the dialog box To see the original image sample simply press and hold down the Crrt key Click on the OK button to finish the operation or Cancel to leave the image color mode unchanged You can undo this operation using the Edit gt Undo command 25 26 Changing Image Size Sometimes you may need to change the size of your image You can do this in two ways The first way is to scale the image L Select the Image Size command in the Image menu The Image Size dialog will appear Image Size New image dimensions width 800 Pixels s Proportional ual Height 700 Pixels Resample Simple w Simple Nearest Neighbor Bilinear Gaussian Hamming Blackman Cancel Enter the new image Width and Height in pixels If the Proportional
91. ting you find that you have no place to include all your drawings use the Canvas Size command in the Image menu Select the color characteristics of the new image and click on the OK button The Untitled Image window will open Note ScanFont has certain limits for the size of an image The image width cannot exceed 32 Kb This means true color images with millions of colors cannot be wider than 8191 pixels images with thousands of colors cannot be wider than 16383 pixels images with 256 colors or grays cannot be wider than 32 K pixels etc 21 Basic Image Editing When you create glyphs by importing images you may want to edit them to get the best result Or you may want to draw all font glyphs from scratch ScanFont includes professional bitmap editing tools and operations for this purpose We will discuss the complete set of editing tools and operations later in the Advanced Image Editing chapter on page 73 The most basic ones are introduced here in this chapter 24 Changing Image Colors While the Image window is open you can change the image color mode i e the number of available colors Select the Color Mode command in the Image menu and you will see the Change Color Mode dialog Change Color Mode Color mode Colors Color table Matte color a Cen Select a new Color Mode Number of Colors and Color Table for the image you are editing in
92. tion of the Source Image section on page 13 4 Switch the scanner on 5 Select the Acquire command in the File gt Import menu 6 Follow the scanner dependent scanning dialog to scan the image We recommend that you select 600 dpi as the default scanning resolution If you scan a small picture increase the scanning resolution if the source picture is big more than 1 inch in height 300 400 dpi will be enough We also recommend that you scan the source picture in grayscale mode even when it appears black amp white This method allows you to get smoother glyph edges that will help create smooth outlines later If you used light yellow lines to align characters properly on paper you should scan in color RGB mode Do not choose a resolution that is higher than the optical resolution of your scanner Some scanner software lets you choose a resolution that is several times higher than the real optical scanning resolution of your scanner The scanning software generates additional information necessary to fill the increased resolution automatically For ScanFont s purposes this is not necessary and can significantly decrease the quality of the resulting outlines Importing an Image If you have scanned your image or prepared it with an image editing application you must save it in a format that ScanFont can open ScanFont supports black amp white and color images in TIFF JPEG BMP GIF or PNG format To open an image in Sc
93. tomize it by dragging commands from the toolbar other menus or the list of the commands on the Commands page To reset changes you have made in menus use the Reset buttons on the Menu page of the Customize dialog box Use the left Reset command to reset changes in the main menu and the right Reset button to reset changes in the context menus 143 144 Customizing Individual Items You can customize the appearance of any menu item or toolbar button The following appearances are available for most items Image i Text New Font Image and Text C New Font To change the appearance of the menu item or toolbar button position the mouse cursor on the button and click the right mouse button Select the new appearance method in the context menu Reset to Default Copy Button Image Delete Button Appearance w Image Text Image and Text Start Group Most commands in ScanFont have pre designed images but you can easily create your own images for any toolbar button or menu command To do so select the Button Appearance command in the button s context menu Button Appearance You will see a dialog box where you can choose the appearance method and if it includes an image choose the image that appears on the button or at the left of the menu item Button Appearance Image only Use Default Image O Text only Select User defined Image Image and text a er i A E Description Button text
94. transformation or Cancel to abort Before After Use the Undo command to undo the operation You may use the Sharpen operation several times to achieve the best result 125 126 Soften This command makes the image less sharp and lower contrast It blurs the image It is the opposite of the Sharpen command described on page 125 To apply this operation select the Tools gt Filter gt Soften command The Soften dialog will appear soften Level ail Enter the Level value of softness View the preview of the image in the preview field of the dialog To see the original image press and hold down the CTRL key Click on the OK button to apply the transformation or Cancel to abort Before After Use the Undo command to undo the operation You may use the Soften operation several times to achieve the best result Custom Filter The Custom Filter command will allow you to make many transformations that are not included in the Tools gt Filter menu as individual commands It is harder to use than the commands described before but it can produce very interesting effects on images The Custom Filter is based on a predefined mathematical operation known as convolution where each pixel is reassigned a value based on the values of surrounding pixels This command selection will bring up the Custom Filter dialog Custom Filter Matrix 0
95. ustomize the feature of ScanFont to communicate with outline font editors such as FontLab Studio AsiaFont Studio or TypeTool Outline font editor Trace outlines IF no outlines ka Ask me every time Fontlab outline font editor such as AsiaFont Studio FontLab Studio or Type ool ie required if you want to export scalable fonts Export outline font into VFB file The Trace outlines dropdown list allows you to control situations when your image already contains an outline layer If Always is selected ScanFont will ignore existing outlines If Never is selected ScanFont will not trace but use only the existing outline layer The default setting If no outlines means that only glyphs not having outlines will be autotraced but existing outlines will be placed into the output font without change If Export outline font into VFB file is not checked the outline editor will be brought to the foreground after each Place Into Font operation Check this option if you want to save the output in the FontLab font format vfb file 159 160 Switch on the Ask me every time option to make ScanFont present the following dialog during each Place Into Font operation if any outlines present Export as Outline Font Trace outlines if they re missing O Always trace outlines O Export existing outlines only Always apply these settings For current document IF this option is on hold down the Control key while choosing the menu command
96. want ScanFont to use the selected option without asking you then check the Always apply these settings for current document check box You will see this dialog box again if you hold down the Crri key when selecting the Place Into Font command 69 70 If your split image has no outline layer or when you click on the Trace Options button in the Export as Outline Font dialog ScanFont opens the Trace Options dialog Trace Options Convert to black white picture O G Tracing options Trace preset Loose i Trace tolerance Curve Fit quality Straighten angle May generate curves while tracing E Must generate extreme points on curves Always use these settings for current document OK There are two separate parts of the dialog Convert to Black amp White picture and Tracing Options The first is invisible when a black amp white image is processed If a grayscale or color image is to be traced you must define the parameters of conversion of the image to black amp white in the upper part of the dialog Choose the Threshold by conversion method in the dropdown list Use the slider to adjust the threshold level if needed See the Threshold operation discussed later If a black amp white image is autotraced this option is not shown After you define the conversion method you can define the following tracing options Easy Trace Options In the Trace Preset dropdown list you can quickly select common predef
97. white mode if not already autotraced and transferred to the outline font editing application which will be launched if not already open or exported in the vfb format If the Export existing outlines only option was checked and there were cells with outlines in the image these outlines will be transferred to the outline font editing application or exported to vfb directly and the trace options will be ignored The exported font will open in a new FontLab Studio or TypeTool or AFS Font window where you can start working with the outlines Tracing Options If the split image has outlines in the outline layer you will see the following dialog during the Place Into Font operation Export as Outline Font Trace outlines if they re missing O Always trace outlines Export existing outlines only Always apply these settings For current document IF this option is on hold down the Control key while choosing the menu command to open this dialog Cancel There are three radio buttons a check box and the Trace Options button in the dialog If some cells of the image have no outline layer you can tell ScanFont to create these outlines by choosing the Trace outlines if they re missing option If you select the Always trace outlines option the existing outlines will be ignored and new outlines will be created and exported If you want ScanFont to export existing outlines only then choose the third radio button If you

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