If you want to use your fonts professionally you will need to purchase FontCreator Professional. It is well worth the extra for the level of automation it offers. If you’re a professional, then you know that time is money. As I am a Buddhist monk, time is not a pressing issue for me, but I still like to automate everything I can, otherwise editing my large Unicode fonts is tedious and error-prone.
How Long Does it Take to Make a Font?
If you’re a graphic artist, Scanahand may be much easier to use, but it will leave you frustrated due to the limited control it offers over spacing and editing of fonts. You really need FontCreator. Compared to FontLab it is very inexpensive.
If you already have a large and detailed design on paper, it is a quick process to scan the image and import it into FontCreator. If you have already drawn it in a vector program, importing from PDF or AI vector images is even faster and better.
Actually, one can do a good job with the drawing tools built-in to FontCreator, but some relearning will be required. My usual approach is to import a bitmap as a starting point, then adjust the curves to make them smooth within FontCreator.
The hardest part is getting the spacing and stroke weights even.