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Student Makes 'Shazam For Fonts', a Gadget That Detects Fonts and Captures Colors (theverge.com)
Imagine being able to use a miniature device which could quickly tell you the kind of font you're looking at in a book, and also tell you about its color. Fiona O'Leary, a student at the Royal College of Art, has developed exactly that kind of device, and she is calling it Spector. The device, which is in its prototype phase, also saves the font type information and loads the data on Adobe InDesign. The Verge reports: If she loved the font London uses on its subway maps, for instance, she could use this device to capture that font and load it into Adobe InDesign. Spector takes a photo of the font and uses an algorithm to translate that image into information about the shape of letters and symbols. It then cross-references that information with a font database to correctly identify it. The Spector also captures colors and breaks them down into CMYK/RGB values.
WhatTheFont.com
An "algorithm"!
You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. - Bob Dylan "Subteranean Homesick Blue
WhatTheFont can look at font text and tell you what it is.
Taking an existing color and converting it to RGB or CMYK is what any hardware store that will color-match paint to a sample has been doing for years.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
What The Font
Are the Fontspring matcherator and the Fontsquirrel matherator the same thing?
Whatfontis ?
Identitfyfont?
Here's a list of seven more microaggressions.
So she uploads a photo to WhatTheFont using the api they provide for doing just that, and then pulls the RGB values from the not-in-anyway-colour-calibrated image and converts them to CMYK.
Fucking groundbreaking.
Just in case you were wondering: Fiona means "white" and "O'Leary" means "keeper of the calves." Carry on.
Google actually has a tool to do just that.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I'm itchin' to try it on the ol' Wingding font
Table-ized A.I.
Some people (big companies) get all bent out of shape if you rip off their font without a license to do so.
Indeed. I've been using WhatTheFont for identifying fonts from pictures since it was launched in 2011. And being able to pull a color from an image is nothing new either. Everything from the built in Digital Color Meter app on every Mac to the Sherwin Williams paint app on my tablet can pull colors from images.
...that not too long from now if this does go into mass production that the Government and CSI Organizations will use this technology to match handwriting samples at the touch of a button. Note: My comment my be misplaced as I do not keep up with CSI Field Technologies.
Seriously? A dedicated device for this? In 2016? It should just be a smartphone app. No need for separate hardware.
Lame.
This doesn't seem possible to do accurately through a cellphone camera without some other lighting and/or color reference being present.
You mean, like, oh, maybe a built-in flash that exists on every smartphone camera?
Many countries offer design registration that confers exclusive rights in a typeface for a term between 14 years (United States) and 25 years (Great Britain). But you're correct that after this expires, it becomes legal to launder the typeface a font with the print-scan-trace method, so long as you A. don't refer to the original font's control points in your trace and B. don't use a similar name for your font. Instead derive the control points from the rules set forth in the "Digitizing" chapter of Apple's TrueType Reference Manual : one on-curve point on every corner, vertical or horizontal tangent, point of inflection, or large change in curvature, and at least one intermediate point every 45 degrees. Then the off-curve point between each pair of on-curve points goes at the intersection of the lines tangent to those points.
There are several smartphone apps, Color Grab being one of them, that let you identify colors at any distance, no extra hardware required. Btw. I suspect the video to be faked. It would require very advanced AI to recognize any font instantly. Usually you have to guide the software by identifying some of the characters before a match is trying to be found.
the Sherwin Williams paint app on my tablet can pull colors from images
There's an app that replicates the "eye dropper" tool that's available in any image editing application? Does it cost money?
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
or you have a refence colour in shot, your RGB values are completely fucking meaningless
It shouldn't. It's pretty trivial. You could do it yourself by taking a picture then using that eyedropper tool on it.
You might not get the results you expect though. The color the camera sees will depend a lot on the illumination color. And your eyes don't faithfully report the actual color of things.
For something like 6 years, too.
.:Semper Absurda:.
Where is the OCR software that first identifies the font, then reconstructs the text until it's pixel perfect? I recently evaluated a selection of current OCR software and was most disappointed to see how little progress has been made in the last decade.
Imagine being able to use a miniature device which could quickly tell you the kind of font you're looking at in a book
OK, let's imagine....
(bursts out laughing)
Nope. Not seeing any use for this at all. If you spend all day worrying about the fonts you see in the world then get a life.
No sig today...
Eyes? Colours? No. Everything.
Our entire sense of vision is an illusion our brain creates as an interpretation of the real world.
The brain relies on information fed to it to determine what is happening in the world. It has no direct connection of its own and must rely on information sent through nerves to tell what is going on.
Humans can not truly see, hear, smell or feel the world. At best a human can derive a point of reference for a moment in time limited to the sensitivity of the organs available.
That we can experience colours at all is amazing and taken for granted. But. The colours you see and the colours I see are different. Unless you are my clone. In which case I complement you on your length and girth.
Many men are colourblind.
Mobile phones are not too far off. Colours change with darkness angles and can be difficult to specify.
I for one welcome our new optical overlords when they will be available for the sensitive colour connoisseur in the supermarket specials bin.
Our entire sense of vision is an illusion our brain creates as an interpretation of the real world.
Morpheus, is that you?
lucm, indeed.
Or maybe she's a genius and this device is detecting the font, then uses an advanced algorithm that sends vibrations across the book to make it type the font name. That's why she keeps putting books on her macbook keyboard in the video.
lucm, indeed.
> You might not get the results you expect though.
ESPECIALLY, if the font is MF'ing COMIC SANS!
But can this gadget accurately determine what font SpaceX uses for it's on-screen telemetry display? I've tried this several times using several online recognizers and none of them get it right.
This must be made a specific instance of a general object recognition. With AI and image recognition seen great progress in the last 4 or 5 years, sending a picture to the backend should give all details of it. [eg send a pic of a flower, it should tell me what it is]
Sadly, unless you spring for the premium version, it will say every font is Comic Sans.
I'm bored. Can I have some of what you're smoking?