Wacom Tablet or Mouse
PSP8 or any other graphic software that can clean up images
Font Creator Program 4.5
Scanner or Digital Camera
Paper, pencil, pen or marker
Eraser
Lots of patience!
Ok first a warning. This may take you from 3 hours to a few days depending on how perfect you want your font to be. These things take a lot of time, so if you are not the type that likes long projects this is not for you.
First step is to make your font use a pencil and if you want graph paper it helps to keep the letters the same size. After you have written down your font in pencil trace it over with a pen or marker, try not to trace it too precisely do it in a natural way or else your font will come out kind of rough looking. After that get your eraser and erase all the pencil markings that you come across, now its time to go digital.
I am going to use my digital camera to get my fonts onto the computer because my scanner is of lower quality. If you are using your scanner scan it at 600 dpi black & white not grey scale.
After you get your image into PSP 8 go to adjust/Add Remove Noise/Despeckle to clean it up. If you know your program well feel free to use other adjustments to clean your font up. Here is what I have so far.
Alright next crop your first letter and clean it up some more using the white paintbrush at 1 px size.
Once you think it is clean enough to import into the font program open the font creator program choose a name for the font and get the program started.
Next copy the letter you are working on. Once you open the font creator program it will look somewhat like this:
Now find the letter in the little blocks that you are working with. In my case im working with the latter A. So I double click that box and it will take me to that screen. I than right click/paste into that section. It should look something like this:
Now to explain, this is where your letter you are working on goes. You have graphs to help you line them up. The dotted line is adjustable to go left and right, this is the spacing of your letter, this should always be moved right behind your letter after finding the right spot for it. If you have any doubts about how it will look click on the preview item and try it out! Play with it a bit! You will need to get to know this because this is the main area where your fonts will come to life. Trial and error will have to be your agenda here in order to get it right. Here is what the button to preview the image looks like:
Repeat the clean/copy/paste/align method on every letter until your font is done.
After it is done delete all the blank boxes that are left, make sure that you only have letters that you made on the font. Save the font and install it into your computer and give it a whirl! Have fun!
