Is there way to convert characters cut out of existing text as .svg, .jpg or .png images into glyphs rather than redrawn the whole thing over again?
I don’t understand. Do you have a picture (scan?) of some text and you want to have separate letters from this photo as glyphs inside Glyphs?
You can use the autotrace either within Glyphs, or copy autotraced paths from Illustrator. Pasting SVG paths into Glyphs also works.
I doubt you are talking about using PNGs for Glyphs. That would go into the domain of colour fonts.
Generally, I really recommend drawing as much as possible in Glyphs (which is, generally, 100%). You can paste images into Glyphs, lock them and then draw the outlines. That gives you far better results than autotrace.
I don’t know if this letter A uploaded since I don’t see it here. I have 12 such letter characters that I copied from text and cleaned up on a graphics program. I can save them in .png, .jpg, .svg. None will do anything other than just stand in the background and I can draw over them. Glyph will not recognize the images saved in .svg format.
Considering how much work it was to extract and clean, I don’t have enough years in my life to draw each one again from scratch twelve times, then try to make 18 more of them.
I would love to have a font file made of these letters, but I can’t find letters like this online and I am not willing to take months out my life drawing each letter, not to mention that Glyph drawing features are harder to use than any vector software I have ever used.
There’s a more efficient approach with better results. Instead of trying to digitize and vectorize, which will give you a lot of imprecisions and bad vectors, I would focus on the base shape (in this case the inner thin line), and derive the rest with filters: the offset, the hatching, the shadow. With a bit of code, you can even automate all of it in one step.
Are the SVG files you have vector drawings of these letters? If so, they can be imported directly into Glyphs.
And if that does not work for you, could you share one of those letters with us so we can try to see what the issue is? Either via a private message here on the forum or to support
They are images from text, cleaned up, not vector drawings.
Is there an app that can convert lines in .jpg to vectors?
Or- if I had to, can you make a font of images?
You can use the Pathfinder in Illustrator or use the Trace plugin form the Plugin Manager.
So I put the image into AI and was able to trace it. Unfortunately, it made several hundred nodes. I pasted it into Glyph but the image did not look like it did in AI. There were extra curves and the nodes were in different places. I tried to clean ir up but Glyph insisted on filling the inside with black and I couldn’t find how to unfill it.
Sounds like grid rounding. Make sure it is scaled right or disable the grid in Font Info > Other.
Thea wks. What about the black fill that is not in the original?
Probably a path direction issue. Can you show a screenshot?
I tried correct path direction, but that not help. Finally I made a decent looking character by picking different white layers in the list of layers on my vector software. Activating them one by one and changing the layer position in front and back, it seems to produce a good character in Glypn. I did it dozen tries I finally found a combo that works. Too bad Glyph can’t move different paths up and down. I am not sure that I can do it again.
Again, I wouldn’t import the whole shape as one that leaves you with a very complex set of outlines that is hard to manage. I would instead focus on the core shape, and add effects with a filter.
How do you add the horizontal lines with a filet?
Sorry: with a filter?
There’s a preinstalled filter called Hatch Outline.
It’s probably best to write your own filter. Then you can combine the effects exactly as you wish. Do you have Python experience?
Sorry, I with I did. That’s one that I never got into.