Welcome Fivos - Sounds like an interesting tool - send me a promo code - look forward to trying your product

Thanks Bob,
I just send you a promo-code and I 'll be glad to read your comments :-)

5 more promo-codes to go...

I'd like to check it out. I also blog about font related stuff like this at:

Readableweb.com

email is:
rfink - you know what to insert - at the domain above.

Anything that might help with font-finding is worth checking out - IMHO.

And welcome as well, Fivos.

Richard Fink

Hi Richard,

and thank you for the welcome :-)

I just send you a promo-code for "Find my Font Pro" by e-mail.
Thank you for trying our product

Fivos

4 more promo codes to go

Would love to try the OS X version, Fivos.

Hi Stephen,

I see that I can't send you a message through the contact form of Typophile,
so I just send you a promo-code using your contact-form at:
http://stephencoles.org

If you don't receive it, please send me an e-mail to fvilanakis (at) findmyfont.com
to send it again.

Thanks for trying our product

Fivos

3 more promo-code to go

Fivos - I'll try out the Mac version of your "Find my Font" tool. Send me a promo code: seymour.caprice (at) gmail.com

Hi Seymour,

I just send you a promo-code to your e-mail.
Thank you for trying the product!

Fivos

2 more promo-codes to go

Fivos,

I'd love to try out the Windows version.

JamesToddDesign(at)gmail.com

Hi James,

I just sent you the promo-code.
Thanks for trying Find my Font!

Fivos

1 last promo-code left

This looks like it could be fun. I've been thinking about something like this but never had the nerve to pull through and actually program it. Can I go for the last Free voucher, for an OS X machine?

[removed at the request of poster]

(Is it my imagination or have all of the vouchers now been handed out to Europeans?)

Not me, Theunis. I'm in Oakland, California.

I'm in Western New York.

Hi Theunis,

I just sent you a promo-code.
You are right, many promo-codes are given to Europeans
but not all of them!

I like that there are so many people in Typophile
wiling to try the product and say their opinion,
so I will increase the free Promotion-codes from 6 to 10
(and I hope I don't have to fire myself after that, due to lost sales :-) )

So...

...there are 4 more promo-codes to go

Oh good -- I was afraid time zones were in our (European) favor, but we seem to have a good geographic spread here.

Fivos, thank you very much! I'll give it a good run-around.

Hi Fivos,
That's a really useful software. Hope they're is still a promo code for me.
It happens I have an image of the font I can't remember, search on what the font or forum didn't point me to the result even if I know I have such font.

Hi Dinobib,

I just send you a promo-code for Find my Font using the contact form of Typophile.
I hope you can find the font you are looking for :-)

... 3 more promo-codes left

Hi,

Great soft! as Dinobib, I hope they're is still a promo code for me too...
I waiting your promo code.
Thank you very much.

Hi Floflo,

I just send you the promo-code through the contact-form of Typophile.
Thank you for trying the product!

... 2 more promo-codes left

Now First impressions upon using the software: Like the interface - straight forward and easy to learn, uses standard keystrokes like shift to add element in multipart characters. I can see this as a great creative aid as well as for straight identification - gives you variants in same range for consideration from your font collection. Also the font preview window lets you compare the match to see how close other fonts are to original sample. Usefulness of this tool knows no limits as a way to view your font collection. Impressed on first half hour of playing with it.

Had the same thoughts as Bob. The tools for adjusting the baseline and splitting connected characters make this far powerful than WhatTheFont. Now if only you had a connection to MyFonts’ library to increase the chances of a match.

The UI needs a new skin. It's not a good looking app — which is kind of a requirement for your target audience.

Stephen – Now if only you had a connection to MyFonts’ library to increase the chances of a match.

I had the same thought after reading the description. But then I realized that its restrictions to one's own library, showing me what I have, is its strength. If I would want to (search for and) license fonts that I don't have, I would use something like WhatTheFont.

Bob, Stephen & Karsten
thank you all for your thoughts.

I'm glad you find the interface easy and straight forward because that was one of our primary goals.

I agree that a different UI skin would make the application more attractive, but there are some inherent limitations due to the Nokia's Qt framework we use to produce the dual Windows / Mac version. Every "beautification" of the UI must be designed & tested to work well on both Mac & Windows and this is not always easy.

I agree that a connection to a big external font library would be a great plus for the application, although as Karsten pointed out the "restriction" of searching only your own library can also be considered as a big advantage: You may find similar fonts that you already have and you could avoid to buy a new one (or the same one).

Another alternative could be to create a proprietary font library for each major font distributor (e.g. Adobe, Linotype) and let Find my Font download them and use them for matching. Such libraries will contain off-course only the required matching information -not the actual fonts- and maybe a link to the distributor's site to view/buy any fonts you need. But you already have WhatTheFont if you want to go this way.

We are examining carefully all the alternatives and some of them are even under development, but I can't say more or promise anything at the moment.

Best
Fivos

Fivos, Really like the thought of a proprietary font libraries feature - set up so you could use your own library first and then go further afield if you do not have a match in house. Would think font foundries might like that too as a great selling tool.

I like that you can see (and adjust the number of), nearest results. The percentage indication is very nice as well.

What struck me is it's amazingly fast, considering the amount of work that has to be done -- even with several thousands of fonts.

Well done!

James & Theunis,

thank you for your comments.

I 'll be out of office for a week, so if anybody is interested in the 2 promo-codes left, please be patient until Sep. 12.

If you do end up including an online resource, it would be best to have options to search either online or on your system (and one for both).

Well, if there’s space for another European, I would very much like a promo code ;-)

Hi Fivos,

Would love to try out your program! Hopefully I'm here in time . . .

Best,
Stuart

Hi again,

Ricardo I just send you a promo code through Typophile contact form.

Stuart, I see that you have not enabled Typophile contact form. You can send me an e-mail to fvilanakis(at)findmyfont.com - by replacing the (at) with @ - to send you back a promotion code.

All 10 promotion codes are given, so I'm now waiting for any more comments you may have.

Thank you all for trying our product.

Fivos

I see I am late to the party, Fivos :-(

Hi Chris,

There is always a drink left in parties in my country, even for the late ones :-)
I just send you a promo-code through Typophile contact-form.

Fivos

εφχαριστο πολλη!

Although the user interface seemed odd to me, it worked like a charm after I got the hang of it! Perhaps because I am using OSX Lion, the screenshot tool just gave a black rectangle the proportion of my screen. If I made a normal Mac screenshot with Command/shift/4 and selected a glyph with it, it worked fine. I could not get the cropping tool to do anything but draw blue lines. I also tried glyphs with diacritics such as eogonek but had no way to let the software no the proper glyph name? When I chose Greek glyphs and switched to Greek keyboard, it worked fine!

I gave it a tough time by using close valued colors and it did not blink!
I have designed a face which stays the same weight but varies in width with some fairly close gradations; and it picked the correct one each time! I will post a few images to show what I tested. As a general rule, it seems to need stem width of at least 3 pixels wide to get started, otherwise, it selects only a piece of the glyph.

I would say that this is a valuable tool for me!

THANKS!!!

Ligatures and swashes were problematic but as long as I chose a normal glyph, it works pretty well!

Handled the faux 3d shaded glyphs well at large sizes;

Did well with red on red;

could not separate reverse figure ground here;

Single greek glyphs were perfect but the double gamma was not appreciated.

Chris,
thank you so much for your time and the extended test you performed!

(a) Regarding the screenshot tool, you are right: It gives a black image in OSX Lion - we will fix this on next release.

(b) Regarding your comment "I also tried glyphs with diacritics such as eogonek but had no way to let the software no the proper glyph name?"
You are right again, although the "Text To Match" box accepts the full unicode range of characters you need to switch to the appropriate keyboard to type the character you want. I think we should develop an alternate input method to allow easy insertion of any unicode character.

(c) Many many thanks for the font-variations test!
We never performed such a test, and I'm glad the results are good.

(d) Regarding your comment "could not separate reverse figure ground here;"
you can use the following options to separate/select letters when their color is very close to background:
1) Change the Tolerance Letter Selection Tool to a lower level from e.g. 32 (the default) to 10 or lower. This can be modified either in preferences or by click and hold the mouse button on Letter Selection Tool.
2) If after lowering the tolerance, the letter selection tool selects only part of a letter, you can hold-down the Shift or Control key and append many selections to the current letter until all main parts of the letters are selected.
(See also:
Help -> How To Procedures -> Letter Selection -> Selecting multi-part letters)

(e) Regarding your comment "I could not get the cropping tool to do anything but draw blue lines"
The Letter Splitter Tool does not actually crop the image but enables you to draw blue lines which are used as boundaries when you select the next letter. You just draw a line at the position you want the letters to be split and then you select the next letter as usual. I think it's easier this way...
This will also work well with the Greek double Gamma letters.
(See also: Help -> Tutorials -> Split Text)

(f) Regarding your comment "Ligatures and swashes were problematic but as long as I chose a normal glyph, it works pretty well!",
I suppose this is related to Letter Selection Tool tolerance and multiple selection method I described in (d) above.
If not, would you please elaborate more on this issue?

Thank you again for your time :-)
Fivos

Thanks for your post. I also would like to receive a promo code (if still available)
to try out your program. Thank you very much for posting such a very much needed
tool.
dpb

Hi dpb,

I just sent you a promo-code using Typophile contact form.
I will be glad to read your comments.

Fivos

I'd love to try this software...any promo codes left?

This looks like the software I've always dreamed about; not necessarily for identifying fonts themselves, but for finding similar styles without all those cumbersome keywords. If it works well, I can see Adobe interested in buying your company and making you a very rich man. :)

"I suppose this is related to Letter Selection Tool tolerance and multiple selection method I described in (d) above."

Fivos,
That is part of the story but not what I was looking for. For me, it would be valuable to find and match ligatures and even alternate for a font. When designing type, I often make many variations on either ligatures or mostly contextual alternates that only come into play in certain situations or combinations of glyphs. I find it hard to tell from my printed samples, which of the variants was chosen by the coding. Most variants are there to get around awkward joins. An example might be the ear of the g. It can work fine with most letters but get awkward next to a "y"--a common possibility. I realize that his is a very specialized need and surely not worthy of you losing any sleep. There might be 500 people in the world who might care--hardly a big market!

Chris

Chris,
thank you for the clarification
and yes I think this is very specialized need indeed.

Alaskan,
I just send you a promo-code using the typophile contact form.
I promise that if Adobe buys our company, I 'll make a special edition of Find my Font
only for you and I 'll send you updates for lifetime,
for the prediction you made! :-)

I just spoke with the operations dept. of our company and we
decided to set a final limit for the promo-codes here in typophile.
We already gave 13 promo-codes and we decided to set a final limit of 15.

So there 2 more promo-codes left and this will be final.

Thank you all
and I'm waiting for your comments

Fivos

Fivos, my compliments! Finally one that beats Javier Guerrero's good old FontMatcher - and by far!

If you still have a promo code left over I would highly appreciate one.

Hi koeiekat,

and thank you for the kind words.
I just send you a promo-code
and I 'll be glad to read your comments when you try it.

1 last promo code left!

Thank you for the promo code. I spent quite a while today using "Find My Font" and trying different settings -- it's very useful! For the record, I have a good friend who is a manager at Adobe and I'll show him the software next month when I see him. He doesn't work in Adobe acquisitions, but nonetheless I think he'll be impressed.

So, here are my notes. I've been told I can be brutally critical....so don't take my opinion personally. It's meant to be constructive criticism.

After I entered my license number to activate the software, a popup dialog said the application "will restart" so I clicked OK. It didn't restart; it just quit. Eventually, I stopped waiting and restarted it myself. No big deal, but it made me wonder how stable the software was.

It works pretty well; no crashes, freezes, or confusing/incomplete documentation. It accurately finds fonts based on pixels, which is impressive and quite useful. I expect to use it often. If I don't encounter bugs over the next few weeks, I'll gladly recommend it to clients and co-workers.

What would I change? Rather than showing a (text-only) list of possible matches, I'd like to see thumbnails. It's kinda cumbersome to scroll through and see each font preview individually. I'd rather compare thumbnail previews of all the possible matches visually in one window.

Honestly? This might sound harsh, but……I'd be very unlikely to buy this software based on the website and logo. No offense, but clearly your logo wasn't done by a professional graphic designer. Had I found your software/website via google, I'd seriously doubt this company knows anything about type design, graphic design or typography. In fact, the only reason I even noticed you on Typophile was because I was puzzled how somebody who used a faux-metallic gradient avatar (that isn't optically centered) had an eye sharp enough to visually identify so many fonts in the forum.

This fear was not abated (heightened actually) when I saw the very first page of "Tutorial 1" boldly featured Arial, Comic and Calibri. (Shudder!) Frankly….I was embarrassed to have the window open to the tutorial graphics and looked over my shoulder hoping my co-worker didn't notice! :)

So, if your target market is graphic designers..….maybe hire one to add some visual sophistication? And, for the love of Jan Tschichold, stop with all the Comic Sans unless you're a kindergarten teacher!

On the upside, the documentation is comprehensive and well-written. So, in conclusion; it works well and does what you advertise, but it could use some refining from a type snob. If you can do that, well, "Find My Font" could become genuinely indispensable for anyone who works with type. (wow!)

I'll take the last one if it's still available!

Thanks for the code.
After my first few minutes, I'd agree that this seems powerful though the interface could use some polish.
Three quick things I'd suggest fixing:
1) Make the Mac version application menu read "Find My Fonts" rather than "findmyfonts"
2) findmyfonts > Preferences > General, "Torelance" should be "Tolerance."
3) As I'm choosing letters and my selected bits are turning red, I like that Shift can add bits (an expected behavior) and the addition of the plus-sign to the cursor is also good feedback. But wouldn't it also make sense to keep the reddened parts of the letter red as I add to them?

Hi Craig,

I just send you the last promo-code,
and I 'l be glad to read your thoughts.

EDIT: I just show your comments
We will take care of (1) & (2) for sure.
We would also consider point (3) but it would have some side effects which are not easy to overcome.
Thank you for the feedback!

Alaskan,
I enjoyed every word of your comments and I'm really thankful for the time you spend on Find my Font.

There is no reason to worry that I 'll take anything personally. I'm old enough to have a good sense of humor and to know that a sincere constructive criticism is the best improvement tool for all things.
I assure you that I already forwarded all your comments to the ...kindergarten teachers! :-)

Fivos

Good to hear you're not thin skinned, Fivos. That's a great characteristic to have in your business!

Unfortunately, I've encountered some problems. The first odd behavior was bad; it would search for matching fonts, find a few (above an 80% match) then, when it was done searching, the window went blank. It showed the potential matches while searching...but once it's done, there's nothing listed. White space. I tested it on a font I own, so aside from the fact it found it while searching, I know there's a match.(BTW; is there a message to indicate "no matching fonts"?)

So, I decided to restart the application. As soon as I hovered over the "file" menu, I got a beach ball. It spun for about two minutes -- something that's never once happened on this computer before -- then, this:

Would you like me to send you the Mac-generated crash report details? I copied it into a text file just in case it's useful to you. I didn't send it to Apple.

Good news: I restarted it, and it seems to be working again. I'll let you know if any more problems arise.

Hi again Alaskan

Yes, please send the generated report to us for further analysis. The easier way to send it is using the 'Help' -> 'License Information' -> 'e-mail To Support' which sends also some technical info about your O/S version etc.

Regarding your other question, no there is no such message as "no matching fonts", you just get a blank list.

About the behavior you describe, i.e. to see some matches which disappear latter, this is perfectly normal. Each search is performed in 2 phases: The first one is faster and may find some fonts which are then rearranged or discarded in phase 2 according to your preferences.
If you want to make the application less strict and keep more matches, go to 'Preferences' -> 'General' tab and move the 'Matching Accuracy' slider to the right (best matches - value: 100).
This may slow down a bit the matching operation but it will usually provide you with more font matches.

Thanks again for your valuable feedback.

Fivos

Move the slider to the right for more results? If that's true, the "matching accuracy" slider is completely counter-intuitive. Looking at it, I thought sliding left would get more results, and to the right would get fewer (more accurate) results.

I assumed "100" meant 100% accurate. That's one font. If I set it to "50" I assumed the results would show all fonts that matched 50%.

In short, I assumed the opposite of what you're saying, and I'd be surprised if I was alone in that assumption. Perhaps the language needs adjusting? Because what you're saying isn't an "accuracy setting" it's actually inaccuracy. :)

This aside, it wasn't showing any results at any setting. I slid that thing back and forth about a dozen times trying to get a result; nothing. Now, using the exact same image, it shows accurate results at the default setting, and at any setting +20/-20 points.

FYI: It crashed again when I went to quit the program. I'll send the data as you've requested.

I think your interpretation of Accuracy is a bit over-simplified at this context.
The number of matches to show is a different thing and can be set by the 'Max. Matches to Show' (bellow) and you can set it to 1 if you wish to see only the top match.

The 'Matching Accuracy' factor is just an easy way to let the user control Accuracy vs Speed and yes it will finally deliver more accurate results (not less results but more accurate in general) because there will be more candidate fonts to examine in phase 2.
If you still feel that the term 'Accuracy' is counter-intuitive I'm open to suggestions but I don't thing 'inaccuracy' is a term that can be used.
Maybe we 'll just change the limit-names to "max speed" and "more matches" and that's enough...

In the next paragraph you lost me a bit... Did you finally get a result or not?
Because you say "it wasn't showing any results at any setting" and then you say "it shows accurate results at the default setting, and at any setting +20/-20 points" and this sounds like a contradiction to me.

I will be really surprised to find out that the application is not working with a single specific font, because we tested it with many hundreds of thousands fonts.
Can you attach a screen capture of the application screen to understand the font you are using and the selection you have made when you get no results?
If this is not possible due to image size, please send me a screen capture by e-mail.

Thank you again for your time
Fivos

Yes, I got a result; AFTER it froze, crashed, then restarted the software manually. Sorry I wasn't too clear before.

In short: Using the file "NeutraTextBold.jpg" it wasn't showing any results at any setting. Then, it froze/crashed. After a manual restart, the same "NeutraTextBold.jpg" worked fine. So, something went wrong and the restart healed it?

This is the image:

I received your report and I will try to check the details - thank you!
It's both very strange & very interesting, because this is actually the first crash report ever received from either a customer or a beta tester.

No the restart can't change the matching ability, it just resets the state of the application.
More than this, I tested the image you provided above and in my machine Find my Font correctly identify the font at any setting (is always the top match out of 200.000 fonts) by selecting just 2 letters: 'Ne'

Could you please attach a screen-capture of the Application screen having no matches?
It's important to see how you selected the letters and how many letters you selected.

On the other hand, I don't know if all these details are so interesting to the other typophile users here, therefore you can send me the screenshot by e-mail and I could post here the final results of my investigation.

Thank you
Fivos

PS - A hint: You don't have to select more than 1-3 logo letters for an accurate match. Just try to select the most unique letters of the logo and put the rest letters only to 'Text To Display' to see how well the match went.

This is certainly an impressive application, and it's proven already that it's highly capable in performing the task it's developed to do. I'll bite and say what has made me a little queasy about this from the start: I wish this wasn't an installable app that uses local fonts. I would really like to see this, as some others have said, as an online service connected to databases of major vendors. That would be so much more helpful.

Using locally installed fonts, I have to admit that to me for instance this would be of very limited use since I only have a limited set of (licenced) fonts installed, and the ones I have I usually know what they look like (since I also paid for them, or selected them carefully from free stuff, or was given them by their designers, etc). So frankly for me the whole concept seems kind of besides the point, since the fonts I'd usually be looking for would be ones I don't have installed. Is it just me?

I can't get it to repeat the behavior. I'm sorry, I thought I made that clear. After the freeze/crash and the restart, it's now working fine. If it happens again, I'll send a screen grab to you.

It crashes when I shut down, though; every single time, without fail. I've never once quit the application without getting this popup:

It's great to see an app that can solve so many font ID requests here in the forums, but if it's finding fonts locally on the system it's installed on, does that mean Fivos your machine has all these fonts? Or is there something I've missed?

As the others have said, it would be extremely useful to plug it into the databases of type distributors, as well as find local font files. I do see the second function as highly useful too as I don't always remember the fonts installed by default with the OS (Like Nina I tend to use only the ones I've licensed or been given), and I know publishers/design agencies that have thousands of font files scattered haphazardly around their networks. (Does it search networks too?)

One final question: how good is it at recognising photographs of text, which may have some perspective, slant, distortion or squooshing?

Alaskan,
ok if you ever be able to repeat the behavior, please sent me a screenshot.
About the crash when you shutdown, it must be something related to your system (You O/S, a strange combination with other Apps installed, etc).
If the report you already sent me, it's not from a shutdown crash, please send me also a shutdown crash report.
Thank you!

Nina
I fully understand your point, but -judging from your comments in the Id forum- you are a very experienced designer, able to recognize every single font you own. This is not always the case.

Consider for example the case of a not-so-experienced designer, or a designer working for a big company which has purchased -though the years- a huge collection of thousand of fonts. In such cases, there is no single person in the company able to recall all typefaces of the company's collection.
Actually the first versions of the Find my Font were designed as an internal tool for 2 companies having this specific need.

That said, I already mention that we understand the need to identify also fonts that you don't have, and we examine the best option of how to implement this functionality, while you will still be able to search your own fonts.

Thank you for your thoughts
Fivos

Hi Ben,

about the possibility of searching distributor databases in the future, see my answer to Nina above, and you can see also my answer in previous page about the ways this can be implemented (e.g. downloadable font libraries, having only the information needed for matching and not the actual fonts).

One final question: how good is it at recognising photographs of text, which may have some perspective, slant, distortion or squooshing?

The current version recognizes just italic & bold variations by creating an artificial Oblique or artificial Bold typeface based on your original font file.
You can also rotate the whole image, horizontalize the text baseline, or split connected script letters.

For the future we plan to add some new tools to recognize artificially expanded or condensed letters or letters slanted to the left (reverse italic?) but these are not yet included in the current distribution.

Fivos

PS: I missed one of your questions: Yes it can also search in any network location you have access from your computer. You can specify either a local directory or a network location as a new discreet 'FontSet' which you may also switch on/off in every match you perform.

> «or a designer working for a big company which has purchased -though the years- a huge collection of thousand of fonts»

Granted, that makes a lot of sense. I think what makes me unhappy is that outside of such a scenario, it seems to assume – or even gently encourage – a «collector» mentality (the more fonts you have, the more you can ID!) – which I'm not sure is a good thing, also ideologically if you will. But maybe it's just me, or I'm misunderstanding something, etc.

> «(e.g. downloadable font libraries, having only the information needed for matching and not the actual fonts)»

This sounds interesting. In case you can share, what sort of «information» would this need to be? Perhaps just outlines of a few key glyphs?

BTW, I really wouldn't call myself «very experienced» (thanks tho), I'm just a typenut.

I do not have thousands of fonts installed on my computer - but with collections bundled with software over the years, freeware downloads and other sources I have a good collection. What "Find My Font" has been doing for me is getting me as close to a look as my collection has, suggesting fonts that have the same feel, gets me into the same aesthetic. And I do not care how well you know fonts you still can't remember all of them visually.

Nina I fully understand your concerns, but it's not the collector mentality that I personally fear the most.

If somebody has the moral strength and the maturity to respect the work of others, he will do it anyway, by checking every time if a font he/she downloaded from a (supposed) "free fonts" site is really free, or there is actually a commercial license to be acquired before using it in a project.

On the other side, I suppose that many people are searching for a font using e.g. the WhatTheFont service and then they download the matching font from other illegitimate sources and sites.
The later I'm sure they will do exactly the same, even if we provide them with downloadable Find my Font libraries.
They will also do the same with our software: Instead of buying Find my Font, they will try to find an illegitimate cracked version of it.

What I'm trying to say is that Find my Font is just another tool and every good or bad usage of a tool depends -finally- on the wisdom, maturity and ethics of each user.

This sounds interesting. In case you can share, what sort of «information» would this need to be? Perhaps just outlines of a few key glyphs?

I can't say much because I don't want to accidentally reveal any details about our matching algorithm but I can say this:
a) All glyphs must be present in the library because we don't know in advance which glyphs a user may select for matching or preview
b) The glyph outlines are not required; a low resolution bitmap image should be sufficient for a small-size preview. This way a font vendor can be sure that there is no way for anyone to acquire the original outline font data from our libraries.

At this point I need to repeat that, we haven't yet decided how we will implement the feature of non-local fonts matching (it can be downloadable libraries, but it can be as well a connection to a remote server) and we also cannot promise yet any release date for this feature.

Thank you for your thoughts

Bob,
you are so right! Even I, which I have zero background on font-design and a highly untrained eye, I have come to realize that there can be so many small variations based on each font designer decisions, that is almost impossible to visually remember all the details and differences between 2 similar fonts.

>They will also do the same with our software: Instead of buying Find my Font, they will try to find an illegitimate cracked version of it.

This makes me wonder if Find My Font could be offered as a web service rather than a downloadable app?

Hi Ben,

although at the last messages we all talk about Font-Libraries etc,
you should consider that the primary purpose of Find my Font,
is to match an image against local fonts on your computer.
This is not possible -or at least it would be much more difficult and very slow-
if the application is offered only as a web service.

More than this, I don't think anybody will be willing to pay for such a service when he can use instead e.g. WhatTheFont or your excellent ID forum here in Typophile.

An alternative is to offer both:
(a) Find my Font (for local fonts) + connection to a web-service (for vendor fonts)
(b) An independent payed iPhone application (vendor fonts only)

..but that's another story, and only the future can show us if there is a market big enough to support the developing of such applications.

Fivos

True, good to think about all the angles, competition and alternative possibilities. I'll be very interested to see how it all evolves. It's a very exciting time in the font industry. (Or maybe it's always an exciting time :)

At last I’m adding my two cents about the tool.
They’re pretty random observations and I’m sorry if they overlaps with the ones of others.
1. First thing, since it is aimed at professional users, which most probably use some font management software or another, Find My Font should, upon the first launch, ask the user where they keep their font files. And/or ask if they would like the app to scan their drives for font files.
2. I like the single window approach, I find the numbers between parentheses (used to order the steps) distracting. They should at least be replaced by more graphic elements or, better yet, with a different solution (maybe disabling input on the not ready yet steps and/or highlighting the current step).
3. Some kind of auto-discovering/guess of shapes would be welcome.
4. Some of the common behaviours I’m missing are:
- Click and drag to zoom a portion of the image (with the auto-guess thing it would be useful a click and drag selection too).
- Command-z to undo.
- In the Finder, the ability of right click on a image file and have Find My Font on the list of "Open with…" apps.
5. The tooltips on the icons show the Windows keyboard shortcuts even in the Mac version (and Command-s is always used for Save, so it’s a bit confusing having it for Screenshot).
6. Adjustable/moveable letter splitters would be a nice addition.

That’s the main of it :-)

Thank you Ricardo

3. Some kind of auto-discovering/guess of shapes would be welcome.

Do you mean e.g. to drag a rectangle and (if the image has a simple background) to automatically select the letters?
...or do you mean something different?

4. Some of the common behaviours I’m missing are:
- Click and drag to zoom a portion of the image

You can zoom in/out using the mouse wheel.
Did you miss this functionality or do you think a more precise rectangle-based zoom tool is required?

You have an eye for the detail for sure, and all of your observations are very valuable and welcome.

Thanks!
Fivos

About auto-discovering/guess of shapes: yes, exactly.

About zoom: yes, I think a rectangle based zoom would be useful (also note that Apple's mice don't have a scroll wheel).

Glad to have been of some service.

But the mice do have a "scroll gesture" by sliding the index finger up and down.

Yes, but since it doesn’t always work the same as a physical scroll-wheel for zooming (for example, in Flash), I’m used to think of this feature as a Windows thing ;-)
Also, rectangle selection to zoom is more precise.
That said, I’ve now tested the scroll gesture in Find My Font and indeed it works very well.

A new release Find my Font v2.3.01 is available.
You can read the details about minor improvements and the new feature "Browse Fonts by Visual Similarity" here:
http://typophile.com/node/88132

Thank you all for your valuable feedback! :)