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I want to create a custom font to use for a game, and it must be a Bitmap font. So the spacing etc between characters must be equal. Now I don't know much of Bitmap fonts.

The font itself will be a black Century Gothic with a white stroke. I could just type in the alphabet and apply a Stroke effect, but this wont ensure equal spacings.

What could be the best way to create such a bitmap font? (Or if any exists already just tell me)

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  • see if it helps: angelcode.com/products/bmfont
    – Jack
    May 2, 2012 at 13:48
  • codehead.co.uk/cbfg
    – Jack
    May 2, 2012 at 13:48
  • I think that those options are better than photoshop, since they handle kerning, hinting etc.
    – horatio
    May 2, 2012 at 13:55
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    and where ever i Know Photoshop is not well suited for font creation
    – Jack
    May 2, 2012 at 13:56

4 Answers 4

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There's no way to create a font, per se, directly out of Photoshop, so I'll answer based on what Photoshop can do, which is create images. This is an adaptation of a trick I picked up from the brilliant Angie Taylor, of After Effects fame.

  • Make a text file with something like "characters" on the first line, and one character on each line below.

  • Set up a Photoshop file that is the size you will need for your characters.

  • Create a text character, centered on the layer, and style it the way you want it.

  • Define a Text Replacement variable (image > variables > define), naming the variable using whatever is on that top line of the text file, and import your text file as the dataset.

  • Run File > Export > Data Sets as Files

You will have a collection of identically-sized files you can then a) load into layers (via Bridge Tools > Photoshop > Load Files into Photoshop Layers...) and turn into a sprite sheet using Horatio's script, or b) assemble as needed in your project.

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I don' think that Photoshop is the proper tool (see Pankaj's comments) but if you were create a document the size of one tile of the sprite sheet, and place a single glyph on it, then duplicate that type layer once for each glyph you want, you will have all of them in the same place and equally spaced.

Then you would need to create a sprite sheet. If you search this stack exchange for "sprite", somewhere in there you will find a sample Photoshop script (javascript) which I hacked together which will resize a document and arrange the layers suitable for a sprite sheet.

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  • I agree. There's no particular reason to use Photoshop for making a bitmap font. You can use practically anything, e.g., Paint, with roughly the same result. And as other posters have mentioned, Photoshop cannot actually produce font files. May 5, 2012 at 21:43
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Photoshop is not at all a font creator, you can create custom font with Photoshop, there are some ugly ways but I guess nobody will advise you to do so.

i have some links might be they can be helpfull to you in-case

you can try this also (already mentioned in my comment)

what gaming guy says on Tool to create a bitmap font from a true type font

hope this will help.

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On Glyphite.com, you can create Bitmap fonts with any number of fills, shadows, and strokes--no need to download an app. You can also adjust any aspect of the font's spacing. I found a free font very similar to Century Gothic (Didact Gothic) and was able to build an example of the Bitmap font you described rather quickly:

Example of a Bitmap font you can build on Glyphite.com

(Disclosure: I work for Glyphite.com)

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    Hi Samer. Your answer got a few downvotes because instead of offering an explanation on how to create the font yourself, it is only a link - which is frown upon here, we prefer answers that can stand by themselves for a long time. It's good that you clarified you work for Glyphite, unfortunately (maybe because of the image you used) it reads like spam.
    – Yisela
    Jan 17, 2015 at 11:46

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