Create a font from hand lettering

[Ron28525064lus1]

I recently subscribed to Photoshop and hope to use it extensively in creating a book of comic strips. How do you create a font from hand lettering--I do NOT want to create one in Illustrator. I want the rough appearance of a hand lettered font. Is there a way to scan in hand lettering?

[jane-e · Accepted solution]

@Ron28525064lus1 

You can't create fonts using Photoshop.

Try using a search engine with the search terms "create font from hand lettering" — it appears that there are a number of non-Adobe apps that can do this. 

One thing you can try using Adobe apps is to go to Adobe Fonts and filter the Classification to "Hand" to see if any of those work for you.

Jane

[Ron28525064lus1]

Thanks, Jane, for your reply. I've tried looking at a few sites online that
purport a solution, but there seems to be a few vital steps missing in
their process. I work from a desktop, so I can't draw the letters on a
tablet. Basically I want to scan my hand drawn letters and upload them as a
font. I've looked at a few YouTube videos by syndicated cartoonists, but
they don't go into detail on how they created their font. I'm very hopeful
that I can find my solution in this forum. Thanks again for taking the time
to respond. Cheers, Ron

[Imaginerie · Accepted solution]

If you want to create a proper font, you'll need a third party software. You can DRAW the shapes using photoshop (using vector shapes that is) it's not ideal, but it's still possble. But to have it as a font (that respond when you're typing on a keyboard), you'll need either a Photoshop plug-in (Fontself maker) or a full on, more capable program. Fontographer, Glyphs, fontforge etc..
The plug in is very easy to use, the other software not so much...
No Adobe product can do that as of now, you'll need to purchase another software.

[Ron28525064lus1]

Thank you for your response. I ran across Fontself last week. It looks
promising.

[Imaginerie]

Glad it helped!

[Rene Andritsch]

@Ron28525064lus1 Depending on the size of your scanned letterforms you could try to image-trace your scans in Illustrator or redraw them in Illustrator and then as already mentioned use for instance Fontself to create your font directly from Illustrator. It is prferable to have your font as vectors.

[Test Screen Name]

Fonts are vector things, not bitmaps, so your first step would be to design them in a vector app - like Illustrator. It's way, way more complicated than just drawing the shapes, fonts are complicated beasts.