Degree of Darkness

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1

Hello,
How can I control the degree of darkness or boldness on the font? I know you can make the font darker using the bold option but I’d like to make the font lighter than that but still darker than it was originally.

Later,
Billy

2

It seems to me that Dick Pape has already given you a pretty thorough answer.

pull down the Effects options, select Bold, press the Right Arrow to select the option. (Use the left arrow to remove any others). > Dial in horizontal or vertical values. > Press OK. It will be done.

If you do it too much, you can use Thin to make the character thinner. I’ve found doing things in smaller increments may take longer but I’m not going to drastically overshoot the effect I’m after.

3

I’m not talking about adjusting the thickness of the font but rather the darkness, as in not making the font so dark when bolded. This way the font is not as dark as it is normally bolded but not as light as it is originally. One way I could do this is to change the colour of the font in the font menu on the word processor to a lighter shade but then it won’t be the automatic colour. I want my font to have the same darkness and thickness of the Swenson/Kauffman (a famous cursive writing) font.

4

You can have any colour you like, as long as it is black.

5

Hello again –

  1. True Type fonts don’t have a “color” variable. You get black or you get not-black. Boldness is directly related to the width of the stroke, not to a color selection. In your application you can change the color of a font, but not in the font design.

  2. I have a font named Swenson. Perhaps this one is a relative of the one you referenced. (Rounded apex on A, single stroke E, 2 shaped Q. The ratio of stroke width to ascender height is roughly 1:18) The letters are thin and “wide open” appearing – relatively large to the width of the stroke.

When a sentence is composed in Swenson, the result appears lighter because there is not very much black to the amount of white. Grayness comes from a lack of black distributed across the page.

  1. The amount of bolding you get from the word processor might be a factor. I don’t know if you can regulate how much stroke width is added when you “Bold” an item. Obviously if you can, “turn it down a notch”.

  2. More fun, with FCP you could creat your own “semi-bold” version of your font which you could use when you wish the darker writing. That works, though not so automatically.

Dick Pape