Fontographer 4.1

by Macromedia

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S. and to APO/FPO addresses. For APO/FPO shipments, please check with the manufacturer regarding warranty and support issues.
• ASIN: B00002S60E
• Item model number: FTM41D01
• Date first available at Amazon.com: May 10, 2002
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #16,082 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
  • #65 in Software > Graphics > Home Publishing > Fonts

Product Description

Amazon.com Review

As a font editing and creation tool, Macromedia's Fontographer 4.1 can go a long way toward creating the myriad fonts digital artists need to accomplish the right look for each project. It provides the ability to create custom fonts, either by freehand drawing, using drawing tools, or by importing images to use as templates.

At its heart, it is a vector drawing application designed to build fonts. The main drawing window features the usual selection of vector drawing tools, but it also has guidelines for drawing ascending and descending letter shapes and for ensuring even letter spacing. There's also a very nice freehand calligraphy drawing pen with pressure sensitivity for drawing strokes manually.

If you aren't up to creating your own font from scratch, you can import an existing font and modify it by changing letter shapes, kerning, tracking, etc. Each shape has a set of control points that can be tweaked and curved.

Fontographer is straightforward in use, and an ideal tool for the extremely dedicated artist who wants full control over everything. However, one of the best parts of the package is not the software, but the manual itself. "Using Fontographer" is nearly 350 pages of information not only on how to use the program, but on designing fonts themselves. Good font design is not to be taken lightly, and the manual/information guide is chock full of tips and guides and information on how to create quality fonts.

If you can't find the right font for the job, or you have a burning desire to learn the difference between a font, face, and family, Fontographer might be the tool you are looking for. --Mike Caputo

Amazon.com Product Description

Macromedia Fontographer is the easiest way to create royalty-free fonts for print, multimedia, and the Internet. Easily expand existing fonts to include fractions, symbols, foreign characters, and logos in Type 1, Type 3, and TrueType fonts; or create an entire typeface from scratch. Fonts created with Fontographer can be used in any program with a font menu on Windows and Macintosh platforms.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fontographer's great but..., May 15, 2001

By 

Mary Egan, (Auckland, New Zealaand) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fontographer 4.1 (CD-ROM)

I have been using Fontographer for 5 years or more. In our part of the world (the South Pacific) there are numerous languages which have multiple vowels (e.g. Maori has 10 and Samoan has 20). These occur to lengthen a vowel by adding a macron above, to create a micro-pause (glottal) by adding a close single quote before and combinations of these. Creating special typefaces with these characters and making special linguisitic characters for dictionaries and academic books have been our major uses.

Fontographer has been wonderful. It has allowed us to do things we couldn't any other way. I have constantly been surprised at the power of the program and wished I could have more time to play with it.

BUT. As proprietor of a design and typesetting business I am used to purchasing and using a wide variety of graphic & layout software and fonts. Fontographer is showing its age in comparison. It no longer conforms to accepted standards for interfaces. It is unstable in the modern environment (I have to turn off every extension but the most basic to run it). And it hasn't been upgraded since Adam was a boy. I fear that it will become completely incompatible with a modern operating system soon and then I will have to abandon it. Macromedia are you listening?

0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Fontographer purchase, May 1, 2010

By 

Andre Rusanoff - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Fontographer 4.1 (CD-ROM)

The description of the product did not state that it is not compatible with the latest versions of Microsoft Windows such as XP, Vista, or 7. The product can only be ran on very old Windows versions. In addition to that the Book condition was listed as "Excellent". In reality the book has damaged corner and a lot of hand written and underlining remarks. I have put a dispute with my credit card customer service after the seller offerer my $15.00 discount.