Pixel font ugly at 16px not 8 or 24

Hi,

With some JavaScript I made an OTF file with 2 glyphes for testing, an a (/) and a b (the chessboard).
At 8px and 24px, it’s pixel perfect in photoshop with no aliasing but at 16px it’s ugly.
Metrics looks good in Glyphs.app (125, 250…).
Why it’s ugly at 16px ?

demo-8-16-24

the OTF :
https://we.tl/t-tVD914UQN6

  1. For one thing, the path directions are wrong. Correct them with the Paths menu.
  2. Make sure you export without hinting.
  3. It is still possible that Photoshop applies some sort of fitting with the rendering mode you mentioned. Nothing you will be able to do from within the font. Perhaps choose a slightly different size (like 16.1 or 15.9)

Thank you mekkablue,

  1. OK
  2. OK
    Not OK in Photoshop :frowning:

I look in more details my glyphs and his render, I think Photoshop don’t like two corners at the same (x,y), old pixel fonts (when Macromedia Flash was everywhere) don’t have perfect snap to 125 grid.

I see. You may want to try the flashify pixel script in the mekkablue scripts.

1 Like

Good !

The script adds little diamond shaped overlaps where pixels meet like you describe it. Flash used to have a similar problem, hence the name. Let me know if it works. If it does, I will turn it into a plug-in so you can automatically apply it at export.

Right now, I make my own otf from JavaScript. If I understand your Python or your trick I can make my own function. I make antoher test using Sketch and 16px is OK, Flash is dead, Photoshop pixel font for oldschool designer and your script a good point.

Finaly, I made this https://f-nt.eu/beta.html
It’s not perfect, and less powerfull than Fontstruct, but it’s could be a fun tool to play with characters, shapes and more ; there is a multiplayer cloud mode (not in real time but usable).

Enjoy!

1 Like