Working With Transformations

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

The transform feature is useful for making new typestyles from existing fonts. It is not available in the Home Edition, but only in the Professional Edition or in the thirty-day Free Trial. Please see this comparison chart and the Registration Page for details.

General Advice for Working With Transformations

Select at least one glyph (e.g. the space glyph) before running transformations. If no glyphs are selected at all, all glyphs in the font will be prepared for transformation, the transformation will take longer, and all hinting will be removed.

Because transformations cannot be undone, copy the glyphs that you are going to transform, and leave them selected. After running the transformation, paste the clipboard contents back into the same glyphs, and undo the paste operation. You can then redo the paste operation if you want to try different values for the transformation.

Small Capitals

Before running this transformation, copy the Capital Letters of your font to the lowercase positions, and select them.

The Small Capitals transformation scales the uppercase by about 75%. To compensate for the scaling the stroke weight needs to be increased with a bold transformation.

Code: Select all

Scale 73,73, about fixed point 0,0
Bold 22,15 (adjust to suit your font)
Move 22,15 (align visual baselines)
Left side-bearing at x = 0

However, the bold transformation is not perfect. Thin strokes and serifs are made thicker by the same amount as thick strokes. After applying the transformation one needs to make some corrections. This is easy when you know what to look for. Compare the original E and the transformed result.

Serifs Are Too Thick



The Serifs are too thick. Zoom in close to see exactly what happened.



All you need to do is select a few nodes and move them to the right:



Intersectinh Co-ordinates

Sometimes when a node is moved it crosses the contour giving a result like this (Capital A).



Just move the offending node to correct this problem.

Thin Strokes

Thin strokes are made bolder by the same amount as thick strokes.
Ideally, they should be made bolder in proportion to their original weight.



Use the lassoo tool to select the nodes that need to be moved.



Move them to the left until the strokes are in the correct proportion.



Reduce the advance width by the same amount.

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

Oblique or Italic

These are easy and usually work well, though they can only make an oblque version of your font, not a true italic. To convert a regular font to oblique, first you need to modify the settings on Format, Setttings, Metrics, Mac Style and Font Design, to Italic.

Then set the italic angle on the Post tab of the same dialogue. Italic angles are usually negative. Enter the value you want, e.g. -7.5º, then on the General tab, calculate the caret slope rise and run. Note the caret slope run value. For -7.5º the caret rise/run will be 1000/132, so the skew value you need to use in the transformation is 13.2

Select all of the glyphs that you want to transform, and copy them to the clipboard (because Transforms cannot be undone). From the tools menu, select "Glyph Transformer" or click the Glyph Transformer icon on the Standard toolbar.

On the glyph Transform Wizard Dialogue, open a script. Since Oblique7.5 is not listed, pick any other oblique transform, and modify the horizontal skew value to 13.2

All of the oblique transforms skew the glyph about the origin. Before you proceed, and while the glyphs are still selected, paste the glyphs from the clipboard, and undo the paste operation.

If you're not satisfied with the result, you can now redo the paste operation and make adjustments to the transformation.

For example, you may find that you also need to move the glyphs horizontally. When you are satisfied that you have found the best combination of skew and horizontal movement, save your transformation for future reuse from the Transform Wizard dialogue.

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

Outline or Hollow

This is another easy transformation to use that generally works well.

Select all of the glyphs that you want to transform, and copy them to the clipboard (because Transforms cannot be undone). From the tools menu, select "Glyph Transformer" or click the Glyph Transformer icon on the Standard toolbar.

On the glyph Transform Wizard Dialogue, open the Outline script. The default weight of the outline stroke is 50 funits. Click OK to apply the transformation.

Before you proceed, and while the glyphs are still selected, paste the glyphs from the clipboard, and undo the paste operation. If you're not satisfied with the result, you can now redo the paste operation and make adjustments to the transformation.

This is How the Transformation Works



The glyph gets bigger by 50 funits in each dimension, and a reversed (white) contour is generated inside of it. The dotted lines shows the original contours of the glyph. You may need to adjust glyph metrics to compensate for the slight increase in size (about 3% in this example), or you could scale the glyph by 97% in each direction to compensate for the increase in size.

Problem Glyphs

As with most transformations, there may be some glyphs where it doesn't work perfectly. Wherever there is a sharp change of direction in the contours, some manual adjustment may be needed afterwards as in this lowercase r illustrated below — before (left) and after manual adjustment.

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

Maths Symbol and Symbol

These two are very simple. All they do is set the width and centre the glyph. In most fonts the maths symbols like < = > + ± should be the same width as the figures. Just modify the width value to suit your font and save the transformation for reuse.

The Symbols transformation is intended for use with Miscellaneous Symbols, Dingbat, or Arrows. Many of these should be the same width, e.g. all of the Chess pieces.

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Condensed Thin

This transformation scales the glyph horizontally, reduces the stroke weight, and scales the glyph vertically to compensate for the resulting reduction in the glyph height. I designed it to maintain the glyph height for the template font (Bitstream Vera), and to reduce the vertical stroke weight from 202 funits to 82. This results in a Panose Classification of Thin. See Dave Crosby's Panose Tutorial for an explanation of the Weight Ratio.

For different fonts, you will have to adjust the values both for scaling, and for reducing the stroke weight.

As with the previous transformations, copy the selected glyphs that you are going to transform so that you can paste and undo/redo the paste operation to try different values until you get the ideal result.

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

Superscripts

Superscripts can be scaled from the existing figures in a font, but if we just scale them, they will be too light compared to the rest of the font.

First, measure the weight of digit 1.



In this font it is 160 funits. If the superscript transformation scales this by 65% horizontally it will be only 104 funits. To compensate, we need to use the bold transform with a horizontal value of 28 funits. This will thicken the stroke by 28 funits in both directions, resulting in a vertical stroke of 160 funits — 104 + 28 + 28.

The horizontal strokes in this font are 140 funits. If the vertical scale factor is 60% the vertical transformation would again need to be 28 (140 - 84)/2

This illustration shows the original digit 2, the digit 2 after scaling (centre), and the digit 2 afer scaling and bold transformation (right).



You can see that with scaling alone, even though we compensate by scaling 65% horizontally but only 60% vertically, the superscript is too light. The weight of the superscript is correct after the bold transformation has been applied. However, the thin strokes and serifs are now too heavy. We need to adjust them manually by moving a few nodes.



Each font will need a slightly different transformation. The superscript transformation installed with FontCreator only suggests average values. You may also prefer to raise the superscripts higher. The transformation is designed to align the tops of superscripts with the tops of numerals. 1¹

The width of the superscripts can be calculated from the figure width. If the figure width is 1000 funits, the superscript width should be set to 650 + 56 funits = 706 funits.

Subscripts

After you have made the superscripts, you can use the Subscript Transformation to insert the Subscripts. This merely creates composites of the superscripts, and moves them down by a fixed value as defined in CompositeData.xml. The most useful position for subscripts as recommended by Microsoft Typography is subscripts that are bisected by the baseline. Depending on the size and height of the superscripts in your font, you will have to adjust them all vertically by the same amount. The widths are normally uniform, and the same as the superscripts.

Superscripts and Subscripts in Italic typestyles may need to be offset horizontally to compensate for the italic angle. The recommended position is centred between figure zeros.

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

Thin With High Contrast

If the glyphs have even strokes you can use a single transformation on the whole font and get a satisfactory result. However, if the glyphs have a high contrast between thick and thin strokes you must apply the transformation several times to the thick strokes, but only once to the thin strokes. This is rather labour intensive, but here is how you could do it.

Cutting the Glyph

Zoom in close using Point Mode and cut the glyph with the knife tool to separate the thick and thin strokes.



At the same time, measure the thin and thick strokes.



For this glyph, the thin strokes were 43 funits and the thick strokes were 184 funits. I decided to reduce the weight to 33 funits and 144 funits respectively.

After cutting, the glyph looks like this in Contour Mode:



Applying the Transformation

Cut the thin strokes to the clipboard and open the Glyph Transform Wizard dialogue.



Clear any existing transformation from the right pane by clicking on the X icon. From the Effects group on the left, choose the Thin Transformation. Enter appropriate values for horizontal and vertical transformations. Save the script so that you can resuse it later on other glyphs or during later sessions. The last used transformation will be remembered by FontCreator.

Click OK to apply the transformation once to the remaining thick stroke. Repeat twice more, then paste the thin strokes back into the glyph, and apply the transformation again. Total, four times for the thick stroke, and once for the thin strokes. The result will now be like this:



Notice how the thick stroke has moved up by 20 funits due to the four vertical transformations. Select it and move it down by pressing the Down Cursor key twice. Select the thin strokes and move them down by 5 funits by pressing Control + Down Cursor five times.

Zoom in and align the strokes using Control + Left/Right Cursor keys so that they join neatly at the top.



The glyph now looks like this:



Select all and join the contours together with "Get Union of Contours" from the Glyph Toolbar. If necessary, adjust the advance width to allow for the slightly reduced width of the glyph.

We can refine the transformation by adding a transformation to move the contours after making them thinner. From the Outlines group in the left pane select the move transformation and enter appropriate values to compensate for the Thin transformation.