How To MATCH FONTS In Photoshop CC - The COMPLETE Guide on Matching Fonts

How To MATCH FONTS In Photoshop CC - The COMPLETE Guide on Matching Fonts

Hi, welcome back to my blog.

In this post I'm going to show you how to
identify fonts from an image, so that you can use them in your designs.

This is going to be a  complete guide on using

the Match Font feature in Photoshop.

I will divide this tutorial into three easy,
digestible steps so that you can follow along,

no matter your skill level.

First, you will learn the basics of how Match
Font works.

Then, we will work with a difficult image,
and I will show you several tips and tricks

to make it work with Match Font and get better
results.

And finally, I will show you how to perform
the search directly on Adobe Typekit, which

gives you more options than Photoshop and
it's a tool that I'm using more and more every day.

Make sure that you stick around until the
end of the tutorial since that's when I will

be showing you the unknown tricks and features.

Okay, let's get started.

Let's start with a simple example so that
I can show you how the Match Font tool works.

I'm sure that you've come across this problem
before.

You're working on a design, and you need to
use the font found in the photo.

This could be a client's logo or simply a
font that you found walking around the street, 
and you took a photo of it.

In the olden days finding a font could have been a difficult task, but now you can let

Photoshop do all the hard work  and let it identify the font for you.

I have a photo with the word "recycle," and
if I wanted to work on a design using this

font, I need to find it first of course.

To do so, go into "type and select match font."

This brings up the match font window here
on the right, and you're going to see the

results populate here.

The first thing that I need to do is 
make sure that the crop area is selecting a single line of text.

So I'm going to click-and-drag these handles.

Make sure that you closely crop the selection
to the left and right edges of the text.

Once you do so, you will notice that Photoshop
will start populating a list of fonts that

are found both on your computer 
and on Adobe Typekit.

If you look at the icons here, you can see
the types of fonts that we're working with.

The green Tk icon are the fonts found 
in Adobe Typekit.

If you don't have the Adobe Typekit fonts
installed on your computer, then you can click

on them to download them into your computer.

In this case, I'm simply going to select the
Rockwell Regular font.

Press "OK."

Then if I select the type tool, you can see
that Rockwell is the font that is selected.

I can simply click, and I'm going to click
on the left "align" button, and I'm going

to type the word "recycle."

Notice that this font is very similar to the
font found on the photo.

It's not 100% identical; you have to keep
in mind that match font searches for fonts

on both your computer and Typekit, and it's
going to give you the closest match to what it finds.

In some cases you will not be able to find
the font that is a 100% match, so use the

closest font available.

In the next example, I'm going to show you
what to do with a difficult image.

Sometimes you may be working with a client,
and you ask them for their logo, and they

send you something like this, where the photo
is not very good, it's at an angle and Photoshop

won't be able to find the font.

So, for example, if I go and do the same steps,
go into "type match font", and then try to

make a selection of that font, you will see
that Photoshop's match font feature will not

be able to give us the fonts that are closely
related to the font that I've selected.

You can see the example here.

None of those fonts are similar to the fonts
found on the sign.

So, instead, we need to adjust the image to
make sure that Photoshop can recognize the font.

All the steps that I'm going to take in the
next example are not always necessary, but

I'm going to show them to you anyway so that
you can try them on your photo in case you're having issues.

So, the first thing that we're going to do
is make sure that we have a straight and a

correct perspective on the image before we
choose match font.

So, to correct the perspective I'm going to
click on the Crop Tool, and nested under it

we have the Perspective Crop Tool.

So, I can click on this corner here to create
this line.

I'm following the edge of the red awning.

I'm going to click on that corner, come to
this corner and go up, and I'm trying to match

the perspective as best as I can.

Then I can click-and-drag on these points
to adjust the perspective.

If I click-and-drag and scale in perspective
and the lines still match, that means that

I've got the perspective right.

So, I'm just clicking and dragging.

Notice how here the edge of the N matches
the perspective, so it looks like I have the

perspective right on the right-hand side,
and I'll do the same thing for the left, and

it looks like it matches as well.

So, what I'm going to do now is scale this
in, so that it can select the word "ARK".

That is the font that I'm trying to match.

Once I have that selected, I can simply click
on this check mark or press the Enter key,

that's Return on the Mac to commit the changes.

And notice how we remove the perspective from
that photo and now it seems as if we're looking

at the text head-on.

If you didn't know about the perspective crop
tool and you enjoyed this tip go ahead and

click on that like button now.

And by the way, if you want to learn another
great trick that I came up with, with the

perspective crop tool check out my tutorial
on placing anything in perspective non-destructively.

It's a great video that I'm sure that you
will like.

I'll place a link right bellow in the description.

But anyway, in some cases the quality of the
photo may not be the best so you may need

to adjust it.

Something that I like to do is press Ctrl
Shift U, that's Command Shift U on the Mac,

to desaturate the image, 
we're removing the color from it.

Then I can invert the colors, so anything
that is white will become black, and anything

that is black will become white.

Control I, that's Command I on the Mack to
invert.

So, now we have a white background with dark
text.

What I want to do is make the background completely
white and the text black.

So I can go into Image, Adjustments, Levels
and adjust the black point, move it to the

right to make the darker pixels darker.

Then click-and-drag the white point and move it to the left

to make the brighter pixels brighter.

Something like that.

Then press "okay."

In some cases, you may need to use the Dodge
and Burn Tools.

So I can select the burn tool and target the
shadows.

The Burn Tool makes pixels darker.

So I'm telling Photoshop that with this tool
I'm going to burn or make pixels darker but

only affect the dark ones.

So, I can come in here and start painting
on this K, and notice I'm making the K darker,

but I'm not affecting the background, and
I can also work on the R as well.

Then I can select the Dodge tool and tell
Photoshop that I'm only going to affect the highlights.

Maybe I'll increase the exposure to create
a stronger effect.

Then I can paint over the letter A to make
those pixels brighter.

And for the edge there I can just select the
Brush Tool, make sure that white is my foreground

color and I can just paint.

And again, you don't have to do this with
every image; I'm just showing you in case

that you need to do that with your image.

Then I can go back into Image, Adjustments,
Levels and do that contrast adjustment once

again, then press "OK."

So, now that we have defined the text like
so, I can go into "type match font," and I'm

just going to click-and-drag the corner handles
there so that they select the text.

Photoshop now is going to search for those
fonts, and I get much much better results.

Now I'm going to press "cancel," and that's
because we're going to move onto the third

section of this tutorial where I'm going to
use Typekit instead of Photoshop.

So now that I have this graphic, I'm just
going to save it.

So you can just go into file, export, save
for the web legacy, then click on "save,'

and you can just save it anywhere that you
like.

I'm going to save it in this folder.

Then, go into the Typekit website,

and the Typekit website is 
typekit.com, and this is what it looks like.

And in this website, we can look at all the
fonts found in Adobe Typekit.

And we can even search with an image, so you
can click on this camera icon or simply drop

a file on this box so that the Typekit website
could scan it.

And I'm going to use the ARK starter file
that we just saved.

I'm going to load it into the website, Typekit
will scan it and there it is.

If you need to, you can adjust the crop handles,
in this case, I don't need to.

I'm just going to click on "next step."

Then you can make sure that the text here
at the bottom actually reads what's on top.

In this case, it really didn't do that good
of a job, but that's okay.

We can just type in the word "ARK," and I'll
click on "next".

Then I'll scroll down, and you can see the
results.

The reason that I like using this website
is because I can also increase the size of the font.

And notice how I'm using the text that I typed
in that previous screen, so I can actually

compare it to the text that I have, unlike
in Photoshop.

In Photoshop you don't get a preview like
this, and also you just saw me increase and

decrease the size of the text.

Also, I can come in here and just change the
word to something else to see what it would look like.

So I'm going to type the word "ARK," and I'm
going to scroll down, and I'm going to look

for the one that most closely matches the
logo from the restaurant.

And in this case, it's the one at the very
top.

Notice how I was able to find the exact font
from that awning on that restaurant by using

Adobe Typekit.

The font is called Brush Script Standard medium,
and I can simply click on "sync".

Then it will sync on to my Creative Cloud
account, and you can see that notification,

it has been synced.

I can go back into Photoshop, create a new
layer, disable the background, select the

type tool and find the font that I just synced
into the Creative Cloud.

And here it is, Brush Script Standard.

If you can't find it, it might be easy if
you click on this icon which only shows you

the Typekit fonts, and you will see it right
there, Brush Script Standard.

I'll click on it, and I'll just make sure
that black is my foreground color, click,

and type the word "ARK."

Then I'll commit the changes, then press "Ctrl
T, Command T" to transform,

and I'm going to click-and-drag 
on the corner handle while holding Shift

to scale up and not distort the text.

I'll commit the changes again,

and as you can see this is exactly the text 
that was used in the awning.

And by the way, let me know down in the comments
below if you've found this tutorial useful.

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Thank you so much for reading, and I will
see you at the next tutorial.