Hello, I am a beginner and I need an important information: why the fonts I created with FCP are LESS READABLE than fonts like Times New Roman, Arial, ecc…? Not always: Just when they are used in small sizes. When they are small, indeed, they look like they are a pale grey coloured, while the other fonts still are very black.
Instead, used in big sizes my fonts are quite clear just like the others.
I noticed it not only in my fonts, but also in a free font I find in your site: Ajohanhand.
There is a way to make the characters look more black even when they are small, or it is simply a characteristic of FCP?
Thank you very much. With the best regards, and congratulations for the very beautiful program.
Angelo
I’ll assume your problem is a problem when viewing them on a computer monitor. There should be a great difference between viewing small characters and printing them.
Small font sizes approach the limits of legibility on computer monitors which display around 72dots per inch (dpi). Printers display at least 300dpi so there is a whole lot more detail when a glyph is printed than when it is shown on a screen. With the greater detail is it possible to more accurately depict where a curve begins and ends.
The issue is font hinting which is a method to specify glyph shapes at various point sizes. Hinting takes care of situations where a vertical line is “almost” complete at a given size. Hinting is very complicated business and beyond the scope of FCP. In fact, hinting is a font “black art” not always done correctly.
The very commercial fonts, such as Times New Roman, Arial etc. have been professionally hinted and will look the best at any size. You should expect that from any foundry product.
Often poorly executed fonts (see “free fonts”) omit hinting. I have examples where eliminating hinting (an FCP feature) cleans up a professional font at certain small sizes. FCP removes any hinting when you validate or move a single glyph so sometimes it may improve things to remove all hinting from a font. This has been my experience on hollow/outline fonts which have shadows where apparently the hinting is just too complicated to get right.
I have found that sometimes you can minimize the gray-ness by moving curves “ever so slightly” (left or right) until they display the best. This works at a given point size, not through the full range of sizes.
On the monitor a glyph can appear greyed and yet print clearly. If this is the case, use a different font or a different size! Getting a bigger monitor also works! Interestingly small fonts may look better on a laptop than desktop monitor of the same size because of screen resolution.
Good luck. One other point, as you get older your eyes wear out so you don’t notice the grayness as much…
Thank You for your answer, Dick. I did not understand completely all the technical issues you talked about because I am not an expert (not with english language either ), but I will study your explanation with calm.
I understood, aniway, that my problem is quite solved when I print my fonts, and that is the most importan thing. The grayness indeed is not such a big problem in itself, if in the end, I can read my characters clearly on the paper.
It is a question that comes up frequently. Font hinting is a complex business. The Visual Truetype Tool from Microsoft will do it, and some font editors will add automatic character hinting, but they cost far more than Font Creator. Hinting may be available in a later version of Font Creator, but I wouldn’t worry about it at all yet. There is so much to learn about basic font editing first. Windows font smoothing and greyscale will compensate for lack of hinting in your fonts, and they will anyway print perfectly without any hinting.