Fontlab studio

FontLab is both the name of a company, FontLab Ltd, and the former name of their flagship font editor product, now called FontLab Studio. Since the early 2000s, FontLab Studio has been the dominant software tool for commercial/retail digital font development. This is partly because the once-dominant Fontographer by Altsys ceased development after its acquisition by Macromedia. During Macromedia's merger/acquisition by Adobe Systems in 2005, Macromedia sold Fontographer's rights and code to FontLab Ltd, so FontLab now owns and maintains both of the most popular font editing/development tools.HistoryOriginally, there were two separate companies. SoftUnion Ltd of St. Petersburg, Russia made the software, under lead programmer Yuri Yarmola. Pyrus North America Ltd, of the USA was formed in 1992 to distribute and market FontLab 2.0 for Microsoft Windows, which came out in 1993 (there was no Mac OS version at the time). Eventually Pyrus bought all the rights to FontLab; hired Mr. Yarmola; and renamed the company. Today they have a wide range of font editing and conversion tools. Programming is still done by a Russian team in St. Petersburg, and management is mainly in Panama, where the company is incorporated.Fact|date=September 2008FontLab's first Mac OS product was FontLab 3 for Mac, in 1998. Since then, FontLab (now FontLab Studio) has been issued for both Mac and Windows, but the Windows versions usually come out first, by six months to a year. In addition, Fontlab has developed spinoff font editors for specific markets. TypeTool, a stripped down version of FontLab Studio, is quite inexpensive and serves as an entry level typeface editor which is popular with students, hobbyists, and those whose typographic needs are relatively simple. AsiaFont Studio, on the other hand, is probably the most sophisticated font editor in the world and can create and edit fonts with up to 64,000 characters. It has special features for editing Chinese, Japanese and Korean fonts.Back when fonts came in different formats and were platform specific Fontlab also began to create a line of font conversion utilities. ScanFont, a tool for converting scans/bitmaps of glyphs into vector glyphs/fonts was part of FontLab 2. But in the next version it was split off and became its own more complete and powerful application. Next came TransType, a font converter for moving fonts between TrueType, OpenType and Type 1 formats and between Macintosh and Windows platforms. A few more specialized font converters followed: FONmaker, for converting vector fonts into bitmaps; FontFlasher, for converting vector fonts into pixelated fonts for lo-res display; and FogLamp, for converting native Fontographer files into modern formats.Products* FontLab Studio (formerly FontLab) [ - font editor for professional type designers* Fontographer [ - font editor for graphic designers, artists, publishers* TypeTool [ - font editor for students, hobbyists, users with minor editing needs* AsiaFont Studio (formerly FontLab Composer) [ - font editor for professional typeface designers of CJKV or other Unicode fonts* Photofont [ - a technology/format for creating bitmap fonts with color, texture and transparency and using them in page layout and website

FontLab Studio has evolved: meet FontLab 8FontLab Studio 5CLASSIC PRO FONT EDITOR FOR MAC & WINDOWSImportant FontLab Studio 5 for Windows works on Windows XP, 7, 8, 10 and newer. FontLab Studio 5 for macOS is a native Mac app on Mac OS X 10.6.8–macOS 10.14 and a special build for macOS 10.15 and newer (including macOS 12 Monterey), which offers Windows-like user experience on the Mac.We recommend that you upgrade to FontLab 7, our modern successor to FontLab Studio 5. Download Get the newest release version of FontLab Studio 5 which works on macOS 11 Big Sur and macOS 12 MontereyPlease enter your email address to get the download links for the latest versions of the app. Thank you! Your submission has been received!Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.You need a FS5W serial number to run the app on macOS Catalina or newer. If you only have a FS5M serial number, contact us.Images courtesy of Łukasz Dziedzic, Gary Munch, Jeremy Tankard and CanadaType.The Industry-Standard Font Creation And Editing ToolFontLab Studio 5 is our classic font editor for macOS and Windows. It has been used by Adobe, Apple, IBM, Microsoft, Monotype, Morisawa and almost every other major font foundry in the world. It is the comprehensive solution for font foundries, professional type designers, typographers and graphic design studios, allowing them to design typefaces and create or modify fonts.FontLab Studio 5 offers a complete integrated workflow for font creation, from font family management, through multilingual glyph design and spacing and kerning, all the way to automatic and manual hinting and Python scripting. Important FontLab Studio 5 now works on macOS 11 Big Sur and macOS 12 Monterey, but we recommend FontLab 7, which is the modern successor to FontLab Studio 5.school If you’re a student, teacher or an academic institution, visit our for Education page for info on edu discounts!Professional glyph drawingDraw from scratch or turn your scans into perfect outlinesComfortable Bézier creationMany designers say that FontLab Studio 5 is their favorite Bézier drawing tool ever. A powerful combination of the Pen, Rectangle, Ellipse, Knife and Eraser tools allows you to create precise Bézier curves. With numeric and freeform Transformations, both manual and font-wide, you can quickly adjust your glyphs to match your design.Watch tutorial video on Bézier drawing.Import bitmaps or vectors, trace and clean upCopy-paste vectors from Adobe Illustrator or import EPS outline artwork. Import monochrome images and use them as reference, or automatically Trace them into Bézier contours, specifically optimized for type design. Clean up, Optimize, correct and simplify your contours with a variety of smart algorithms for perfect quality.Better curves with FontAuditEasily spot odd points and suspicious curves with FontAudit, our live outline custodian that will visually show you errors and possible issues in your glyphs, and sometimes even automatically fix them. Use FontAudit to find those lines that are just off of vertical, missing extrema points, and tangent curves that aren’t quite smooth.Watch tutorial video on better curves.In-context design: Shape groups & NeighborsFontLab Studio 5

Can smartly auto-generate over 2,500 accented characters from your components.Watch tutorial video on Latin diacritic design.Advanced typography with OpenType LayoutAdd advanced typographic OpenType Layout features such as small caps or ligatures with the industry-standard Adobe FEA syntax. The OpenType Preview allows you to see the effect of features, including how they interact.Watch tutorial video on OpenType featuresFontLab 8 supports MM and variable fonts with unlimited axes and intermediate masters, and supports all OpenType color font formats. With auto layers, composite characters update their positioning as you adjust the anchors. Preview OpenType Layout features right in the editing window. Industry-standard font productionPostScript and TrueType Hinting, PythonPostScript HintingHave FontLab Studio automatically set vertical alignment zones and glyph-level hints for optimized screen legibility in small sizes. Or take complete manual control. Use FontLab’s automatic hinting at any stage, and choose when and where to tweak by hand. The built-in system and FreeType rasterizer preview shows you exactly what your final font will look like on screen.TrueType HintingWith FontLab Studio 5’s integrated visual TrueType Hinting workflow, you can get pixel-perfect screen rendering in all Microsoft Windows apps. Set your PostScript hints and alignment zones, and have FontLab automatically generate TrueType Hinting commands, that will guarantee uniform text rendering. You can also manually hand-hint some or all your glyphs for absolute control over every pixel at every screen font size!Watch tutorial video on TrueType Hinting.Macro scripting via PythonFontLab Studio 5 has massive support for Python, the standard programming language for font work. Almost anything you can do in FontLab Studio is accessible to Python programming. Not a programmer? That’s okay! There are dozens of free third-party Python scripts for FontLab available from many sources. There are even third-party macro plug-ins with a full user interface, such as the Font Remix Tools.Video on FontLab Python scripting.FontLab 8 lets you open fonts in .glyphs and UFO formats. Export single fonts and entire families into monochrome, color and variable OpenType, webfonts and UFO. Autohint fonts using two different engines, transfer manual TT Hinting commands, and preview true Microsoft Windows font rendering on macOS!“For me, it makes sense to keep everything in one application from early design stages through to kerning, hinting and final mastering. Each typeface I design is different with different challenges, FontLab Studio handles these with ease, all I have to bring to it are my eyes and determination for what I want.FontLab Studio 5 is massively powerful and can be daunting, yet I use it quite simply. I like to take my time over each stage of a type’s development. FontLab Studio lets me do things my way and doesn’t force me to work a certain way or change the way I prefer to work. It’s brilliant at doing its job.”— JEREMY TANKARD, TYPOGRAPHY.NETFontLab Studio 5 SummaryDrawing tools: Pen, Pencil, Brush, Sketch, Ellipse, Rectangle, Line, PolygonEditing tools: Knife, Guides, Meter, mirror, rotate, overlap operationsComponents for accented and composite charactersView: FontAudit, Mask & Bitmap layersActions: multi-font and multi-glyph outline, metrics and hinting transformations, automatic bold, decorative