Today we are super happy to release a major update of Fontself Maker for Illustrator & Photoshop.
UPDATE: Have a look at the latest v3.0 version and features.
After Fontself Maker 2.0, which brought a completely new extension with new UI, kerning, advanced spacing, Smart Batch, zoom & more, the 2.1 version now comes with key features that on the top-requested list: color vector fonts, ligatures, alternate glyphs. Let’s have a look...
Color Fonts
Color vector glyphs can now be created from Illustrator shapes that contain fill or stroke colors, opacity or gradients, and they are now embedded into Opentype-SVG color fonts (Fontself for Photoshop exports color bitmap fonts).
The Opentype-SVG format is a cool new font technology and such color fonts can now be used in Illustrator CC 2018 & Photoshop CC 2017+. Oh, and wait, these are also unofficial supported in InDesign CC 2018. Color fonts may still be buggy in ID, but, oh boy, these are exciting days…
You can learn more about color fonts and their support on our dedicated resource: www.colorfonts.wtf
Alternates
You can design new variants of a specific character and use them directly in your favorite apps to add a touch of variety among your glyphs. When you add an additional glyph to an existing character in Fontself, you are prompted whether you want to create an alternate glyph or replace it.
And the good news is that you can add many alternates to a single character. To display a specific alternate in the Fontself preview windows, just select a glyph and pick from the list that pops below.
In Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign, you can use each alternate the exact same way, by selecting a character containing alternates, or by loading the Glyphs panel.
Ligatures
You can now associate several characters to a single glyph, and two types of ligatures are currently supported:
- Standard ligatures (usually for historic ligatures like ffi or st) — and these are displayed by default.
- Discretionary ligatures (for unusual type of connections, or even specific words).
Just type a combination of letters to define the exact character sequence that will be replaced by the ligature’s glyph:
Glyph Filtering Panel
A new glyph filtering panel lets you navigate into complex fonts. Just click on the tiny bottom left icon to discover a whole new way to sort your glyphs (plus display Unicode values for web freaks ;)
… and more improvements
- 🔍 Advanced Spacing
- 👯 Easy Kerning
- 💡 Smart Batch & Smart Glyph Replace
- 🎈 Scale all glyphs at once
- 📝 Font creation template file
- 💬 Community Forum
- ℹ️ Searchable Help
Want more? Then watch Monika Gause, one of our dear users, as she uses Fontself to create a full geometric color font family right in Illustrator:
Don’t miss Monika’s super insightful tutorial on how she designed and created her color font family in one afternoon.
Now if you liked this Fontself update, please clap below as many times as you want to express your excitement (yep, you clap up to 50 times ;)
It’s time to unleash your creativity and have fun: so update your copy of Fontself Maker or get a new one on www.fontself.com
UPDATE: Check new v3.0 features.
