I Created My Own Handwriting FREE! to Celebrate Thanksgiving

I’ve been wanting to try this for a long time and will still play with my 30 Day Trial of FontCreator 5.6 to try to accomplish several of my own fonts I can use, including my signature.  It’s not all that difficult, but tedius and time consuming. 

I found the tutorial wich came with the program to be quite inadequate to learn to function in the program.  But, after doing the full alphabet, I found an online tut to help with the symbols and number imports.  Up until then, I was having to save each character to an individual file, then import it in.  UGH.  Turns out, you can copy and paste, you just have to be on the correct screen to do so.  Glory!

My Tutorial and Tips:  

I used a combination of a flatbed scanner set to high resolution, a felt tip Micron 02 Black Pen, a writing guide found on-line (just to keep letters to scale and separate from each other).  I would like to try writing again on a pad rather than on the table to smooth out some marks, as recommended, but I forgot.  I sort of like the pen look.  I’d also like to use a light box and a slant guide.  I’m not that picky, but it just saves some time later trying to get letters to match up correctly.  Writing individually, it’s hard to remember if you are writing up-right, as in print, as opposed to the slant of cursive. 

Most cursive hands on-line slant to the left, rather than correctly, to the right, and that bugs me, so I don’t use most of them.  They need A BEKA curriculm, obviously. 

I learned a few tips I’ll share for those interested in trying this for fun sometime when you have 7-8 hours to kill.  {Llike I do, but I really wanted to try it.  I’ll begin my cooking this afternoon, and fortunately, am not expecting company…nobody needs clean laundry for school!  YEAH!  It was worth celebrating.  Did I mention I have a passion for letters?  Yes, I know, it’s a little lame.  I just love lettering, always have.  Doodling in front of the TV for hours was my past-time as a kid, when I wasn’t learning to cross-stitch.  I was totally born in the wrong century.

In any case, tips.  For the most part, don’t “enter” into your o, n, m, y, i…just start as if writing in “print”.  Then, remember to keep a slant line for italic lettering, and end with a swish, but not overly.  The letters must connect sometimes.  It’s unfortunate that you can’t program an ending letter separate from a connecting letter.  (Somebody take that and run with it…computers are smart enough to figure that out if told, surely.)

I did most the letters by hand, but a few of the unexpected symbols and fractions weren’t on my template.  Rather than re-scanning, I just wrote them by computer mouse and copied them in in the same way as I did the scanned items.

 In PhotoShop, you’ll just select the letter with your box selection tool, then click from the edit menu, “copy”, then open the letter you are working on in FontCreator, and hit “paste”.  Then, you want to drag the letter to the appropriate guides for the letter, and move the guides to fit the size of the letter.  Just drag the dotted vertical lines to do so.  You will have to adjust these guides later for good connections, but try to get close on the first pass. 

Click from the keyboard F5 to see your progress and learn as you go.  You can type there phrases and it will help you see what you need to do to correct.  You can also get there from the menu under Font|Test.

Also, if you don’t like the way a letter has progressed and want a fresh slate, it can be hard to clean everything off by selection at times.  So, go to the letter screen you are working on, then menu|edit|”Make Empty”…then past in a fresh letter and start over.

“Make Empty”…I laugh every time I see that come up (not a level 10 laugh, but a level 2, “inside laugh”.)

So, you then save it occassionally to avoid crashes and that sort of thing.  You install to Windows|Fonts on a PC.  Then, if you don’t like it, want to make changes, and must reinstall, you first really need to close any programs where you’ve tried to use it.  I needed to uninstall and reinstall several times, and eventually had to reboot the computer to convince it that I wasn’t currently using the font.  So, once you uninstall from “Fonts” folder, you can reinstall by selecting from the File menu in FontCreator:  File|Save As, then I just drag that .ttf folder you see there with the name you named it down to my toolbar where my Fonts folder is open.  You have to wait for the Fonts folder to open or it won’t install your font there for you. 

You should have no problems.  It was automatically available to my PhotoShop Elements program without a computer reboot.

Good luck!