FontMatch

May 17, 2005 · Comments

I picked up a copy of the new [Layers Magazine](http://www.layersmagazine.com) today. It’s the new magazine that replaces *Mac Design*. Same magazine, but now they can have screen shots from the Mac and PC, concentrating on the industry-standard applications rather than the operating system. Hmmm…sounds like a good idea. Wonder why I didn’t think of that? ;-)
Anyway, there was a blurb in there, may have been an ad, about [FontMatch](http://www.stretchedout.com/products/fontmatch.php). This software looks great in theory:

>How many times have you been searching for a font, looking through the font books one page at a time, or just knowing that it’s on your computer somewhere, but you cannot remember its name? Maybe a customer gave you a business card and asked you to match it, or maybe you saw a sample of the perfect typeface somewhere and wanted to create something similar… it’s time consuming, isn’t it? Not to mention frustrating.

Amen. I have quite a collection of fonts and often I can “see” the font I want in my head but can’t remember the name. Or I have to match a particular font and I can’t remember the name. Or I want to use a font that “feels like” another font and I don’t own the inspiration font. Even though I have my fonts organized by style sets in [Font Agent Pro](http://www.insidersoftware.com) it still takes a while to go through over 8000 fonts (yes, I’m a font packrat) and find the right one.

First ouch…I can’t stand software pages that don’t have the price on the main information page. Don’t make me click the “buy now” button to see that your software is $49.95. Yikes! That’s pretty steep for a one-trick pony. But I like the premise so I go against personal policy and download the demo for software I likely won’t buy.

Second ouch…demos should be functional.

Fontmatch

They’re kidding, right? I’m supposed to try out software to see if identifies a font accurately and the demo won’t tell me what the top results are? What is the point? The demo should work perfectly a few times and not be crippled in this way. At worst, the demo should *limit* results to the top 10 matches. I guess they know it’s a one-trick pony too and if it worked completely, folks would use it for one project, get their answer and never come back. Thems the chance you take when you price your software at $49.95, half the price of a pro font manager alone which serves a far greater purpose. This software is also available for Windows and I *know* most XP users won’t go for $49.95 font matching software. $30 seems to be threshold for utilities like this, and even that’s pushing it.

To see what happens anyway, ([Eric](http://www.9to5andotherwise.com) calls this “blogger fodder”) I went to [MyFonts](http://www.myfonts.com) and found a font I know I own. I took a screen shot of a letter, saved it as a GIF and then dropped it on FontMatch. I’m skeptical that it can find an exact match based on a single letter. No matter what’s in the image you feed it, it expects a single character only. Certain letters are characteristic of a font, others aren’t. [What The Font](http://www.whatthefont.com) performs a similar service but its results are best when you give it a few letters to examine (I get best results when I sent it 3 or 4 letters to look at). FontMatch took about 15 minutes to load all my fonts, then another 30 or so minutes on my dual G5 to compare the sample to my collection. I hope the loading is a one-time thing. *(later update: When I quit the application, an “unloading fonts…” box came up and as long as it took to load the fonts it’s now taking to unload them…and it’s taking 70% CPU to do it! Give me a break. I can’t get this dog to the trash fast enough.)*

So does it work? Not sure, since as promised, it doesn’t reveal the top 10 choices. However, the correct font was listed at choice #21, with 85.9% probability. The top choice, whatever it is, was only 87%. This was a screen shot of a font right off a font site, not a lot of confidence in how it would identify the font in a logo scanned off a business card. Guess I’ll never find out at $49.95.

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