What is WhatThe­Font? The app that rec­og­nizes fonts

You come across an exotic font online and wonder, “What font is this?”. WhatThe­Font is a practical online tool that can easily answer this question. You simply upload an image with the desired text, and the tool displays matching fonts from a huge database.

What is WhatThe­Font?

WhatThe­Font is an online service from MyFonts, developed by Kevin Woodward. This tool helps you easily identify fonts. You simply upload an image con­tain­ing the desired text, and WhatThe­Font analyzes the letter shapes to suggest similar or exact fonts. Multiple fonts in one image are not an issue. The service can draw on a database of over 230,000 different fonts for recog­ni­tion. The tool is es­pe­cial­ly suitable for designers, ty­pog­ra­phy en­thu­si­asts, or anyone looking for a specific font for their projects. In addition to the web version, there is also a mobile app for iOS and Android, allowing you to identify fonts on the go.

Find a font with WhatThe­Font

To find out the name of a font, you just need a small text excerpt as an image file. The font recog­ni­tion via WhatThe­Font involves the three steps upload, crop, and display result, leading to the result in seconds. Here’s how to use the web app:

Step 1: Access the website

Access the “WhatThe­Font” web app.

Step 2: Take a screen­shot of the font

Take a screen­shot of the section of text you want to analyze. A free screen­shot tool is already in­te­grat­ed with the Snipping Tool in Windows. This was also used in our test to create the following image file of a sample text:

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Pay attention to the Web App’s guide­lines for screen­shots: WhatThe­Font delivers the best results with good image quality. The text section should contain enough char­ac­ter­is­tic letters of the font and be aligned as hor­i­zon­tal­ly as possible. It should also be in the Latin alphabet. Moreover, try to provide a single line of text; the letters should not touch.

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Step 3: Upload screen­shot

After saving your screen­shot locally, use the upload function of the web app in the third step to match the text section with the WhatThe­Font database. Click on the “or upload an image” button and select the image file from the ap­pro­pri­ate directory on your computer or simply drag and drop the image onto the page.

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Step 4: Define crop in web app

After uploading, you will have the option to crop your screen­shot ac­cord­ing­ly. In this step, WhatThe­Font au­to­mat­i­cal­ly iden­ti­fies words in your sample. Check the as­sign­ment and make cor­rec­tions if necessary.

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Confirm your crop by clicking on “Identify font.”

Step 5: Result

The web app will then present you with a selection of fonts from the WhatThe­Font database that match your text segment. If the desired typeface is found, you can purchase it directly via MyFonts.

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Al­ter­na­tives to WhatThe­Font

WhatThe­Font is not the only tool of its kind. There are a number of other services that allow you to easily identify fonts. We will show you the three best al­ter­na­tives for rec­og­niz­ing fonts.

Font Squirrel Matcher­a­tor

The Font Squirrel Matcher­a­tor is also a powerful tool for automatic font recog­ni­tion using images and is very similar to WhatThe­Font. You upload an image, and the service, available as a web app, analyzes the letters to suggest matching fonts. Par­tic­u­lar­ly useful is the support for OpenType features and web fonts. Font Squirrel places high value on fonts that are free to use, making the tool es­pe­cial­ly appealing for people with a small budget.

Iden­ti­font

Iden­ti­font works quite dif­fer­ent­ly from image-based tools: Instead of uploading an image, you answer questions about specific features of the font, such as “Does the font have serifs?” or “What does the capital J look like?”. Based on your answers, Iden­ti­font suggests possible fonts. This is es­pe­cial­ly useful when no image is available or the lettering is heavily distorted. Iden­ti­font also provides in­for­ma­tion about designers, related fonts, and font foundries.

Adobe Capture

Adobe Capture is a mobile app that offers, among other things, a font recog­ni­tion feature. Simply point your camera at the text, and the app analyzes the letters in real-time to suggest matching Adobe Fonts. The tool is seam­less­ly in­te­grat­ed into Adobe Creative Cloud, sim­pli­fy­ing use in Photoshop, Il­lus­tra­tor & more.