Rubber Stamp effect workflow

I’m trying to take font I made and generate a rubber stamped version of it. This requires typing the characters into Photoshop, creating the rasterized effect, bringing it into Illustrator to autotrace, and then back into Glyphs. I’m having trouble with the amount of manual labor required to do such a thing. Doing the effect, and vectorizing it is easy, but everything else in the process is a manual, per-glyph task, as far as I can imagine.

  1. Is there a quick way to copy all glyphs (more than 400) into Photoshop in one shot?

  2. Once they’re all individually vectorized in illustrator, any recommendations for a seamless copy+paste process, with regards to coordinates and scaling? Opening each glyph slot and pasting the shape would be fine, I just don’t want to tweak the scale for all 400+ glyphs each time I paste.

Also, any other tools/workflow recommendations for this effect would be much appreciated.

  1. Export to the Adobe Fonts folder and just type it?
    http://www.glyphsapp.com/tutorials/testing-your-fonts-in-adobe-apps

  2. There is a tutorial about importing from Illustrator. Scale it up in AI (1pt=1u), move it to the origin (see handbook or the tutorial) and cut it into the clipboard. You can automate these steps with an Illustrator action.

Or you can leave them all at the same wrong scale in Glyphs, and then scale up the whole font with File > Font Info > Font > Units per Em.

In that case, set the grid step in Gont Info > Other settings to 0 to avoid rounding errors.

1: Use a script to dump all glyphs to text Indesign. (http://indesignsecrets.com/make-a-font-contact-sheet-in-indesign.php)
2: Blow them all up to 120 points with lots of tracking and leading.
3: Export the entire file to a series of hi-res jpeg images.
4: Edit each sheet in Photoshop and place it in AI for tracing.

Scale them all at once after you paste all of them into the font.

Georg’s old Trace Background plugin might allow you to avoid Illustrator. You’ll probably have to play with it a little to figure out how large of an image you can import and autotrace without Glyphs dying under the load of the image and points, and don’t try tracing in the same file you’re building the font in. https://github.com/schriftgestalt/Glyphs-Plugins/tree/master/TraceBackground/TraceBac kground

Thanks, DTF — That script handles my first hurdle perfectly. I’m curious about your step 3 - what’s the benefit of exporting a series of images? I planned on having one large graphic containing all the glyphs, apply the effect to the entire thing, and bring it into AI for tracing. Then once they’re vectors, I can break them out individually.

Be careful, because AI tends to add invisible empty paths on top of the filled paths. So, first, you want to set your stroke and fill colors to Empty first, then Select > Same Stroke and Fill, and delete. Then you are left with only the paths you want.

Then it is best to drag-select with the Group Selection Tool (white arrow with a plus symbol, click and hold the white arrow to select it), and copy and paste to Glyphs. You can put ‘move to origin, scale by percentage, cut’ into an Illustrator Action.

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[quote]…what’s the benefit of exporting a series of images? I planned on having one large graphic containing all the glyphs, apply the effect to the entire thing, and bring it into AI for tracing.[quote]

With one huge file you’re probably going to run into performance and stability problems. It’s probably easier to break the job up into chunks.

I sometimes do it in AI, sometimes broken up like DTF suggests, depending on the project. Whatever works best for you and/or the project.

Can someone provide guidance on installing the TraceBackground plugin? I downloaded it and put the folder into the User/Library/App… Support/Glyphs/Plugins folder but nothing happens.

· Generate an image. Keep in mind that 1 pixel = 1 unit in Glyphs at 72 DPI. The more complex your shapes are the fewer you should have in a single image—thousands of points in one Glyph slot will cause awful performance problems.
· Create a new file in Glyphs, open a letter.
· Glyph > Add Image (save!)
· Filter > Trace Background (save!)
· Paths > Tidy Up Paths (save!)
· Now copy/paste your glyphs to the appropriate slots in your font file.

Did you restart Glyphs after you installed the plugin?

I did restart it. I’ll try again tonight.
The TraceBackground folder contains multiple files; Is dropping that entire folder into the Plugins folder the correct way to do it? I originally installed RMX successfully, and that was a single file so I wonder if I’m missing something.

It should be a file with a .glyphsFilter suffix.

Maybe I don’t understand GitHub, but I can’t find any .glyphsFilter file at this link https://github.com/schriftgestalt/Glyphs-Plugins/tree/master/TraceBackground/TraceBac kground

you can download it here: http://t.co/wb2Vs6Uxb0