Font recognition by image

Very many users of moderncomputer systems, or rather, designers, somehow encounter a problem when it is required to make the font recognition of the text contained in some image. Now we will consider a few simple options for how to do this with minimal time and effort.

Font recognition: basic aspects

Let's start, perhaps, with the fact that, in general, it is naiveTo think that the definition of a font is the same as recognizing a text. Recognizing the text created in an editor or simply printed on old typewriters is just a special case of a more general definition. And even such powerful programs as ABBYY Fine Reader are not always suitable for this. Of course, they know how to extract text fragments from the desired image, but the analysis in most cases is done solely on the basis of standard fonts, which are universal for all types of text editors and freely integrate into applications of this type that allows them to be used even independently of the main software platform.

But what to do when recognition is requireda font created manually, say, in a graphical application or in general drawn by hand? Judge for yourself, because the artist can depict any letter as you like.

As the simplest example, one can takeat least original collections of Russian folk tales, where each capital letter at the beginning of the first paragraph of the text was made out with a patterned drawing. From all this accumulation the computer program should choose the letter, throwing aside everything else. Actually, that's why the recognition of Cyrillic fonts, even compared to hieroglyphs, is quite a difficult task. Nevertheless, there are some means for this.

Applications for recognizing the fonts in the picture

Now we will stop at a few simple software products that will suit the user of any level.

First of all it is worth noting the application CuneiForm. It is a program for recognizing fonts, including Cyrillic, which not only allows you to determine which language the text belongs to even with an unusual font, but also to preserve the original structure of the entire document. For example, if it was created in some computer application, it contains tabular data (as well as the table itself), the application will be able to easily define such a structure and save it when outputting the results. The same applies to the formatting used in the document.

One of the main features of the application isand the fact that, in addition to supporting multiple languages, the program has its own dictionary, which is used to analyze text that is carried out after the process of font recognition. At the same time, the program works quite well with low-quality documents, for example, scanned old photos with text or historical documents. Among other things, you can add new data to the dictionary database for later use.

A very simple application can be called andthe Font Analyze program. Without going into the principles of its functioning, let us note only the process itself. Here, the user simply needs to download the image with the font in the analyzer field, and then activate the recognition process. Here the "trick" is that after receiving the result of scanning and processing it can be edited.

Interesting is the Font Matching Tool. Among other things, this application is recommended to be used in conjunction with the program Compare It !, which allows you to compare the original document and the result with recognized fonts.

Online font recognition service

In addition to the programs installed on the computer, ortheir portable versions can use the services of many Internet resources. The recognition of the font in the picture in the action plan is similar to the previous applications. The only difference is that the user downloads the image directly to the site, and the result is downloaded to his computer.

Among the most popular and popularservices include online systems such as What The Font, Identifont, Message Boards: Typophile, Bowfin Printworks, Type Navigator, Flickr Typeface Identification and many others.

Conclusion

It remains only to add thatprograms, or on Internet resources it is better not to count. There is no need to expect anything supernatural from them. Judge for yourself, because even the usual captcha is not recognized by all Internet bots. But the analogy with programs designed for font recognition is obvious here. So when using such tools, you can rely mainly on the results of determining the simplest fonts. Another thing is that they are not recognized from printed office documents, but from pictures. This, in fact, is the main plus of all software products and services of this type.