User Guide

Chapter Four
Editing Bitmaps
Using the Bitmap Window
Editing Bitmaps
Tools in the Bitmap Window
Preserving Your Original Bitmaps
Okay... okay... okay. You’re probably asking yourself why
you even need to read this section since there are two good
reasons why you most likely won’t have to worry about
bitmaps. The first is Adobe Type Manager (ATM), a
program that improves the screen appearance of PostScript
Type 1 fonts. The second is TrueType, the outline font
format developed by Apple and Microsoft which doesn’t
need bitmaps at all, since the font’s outlines are used for the
screen display.
The advent of ATM and TrueType has almost made
bitmaps a thing of the past. So we recommend that you
spend your time designing good outlines, and your bitmaps
will take care of themselves.
So why would you want to bother editing bitmaps? Maybe
you don’t have ATM... or just plain don’t want to switch to
TrueType. Perhaps you’d like to create gray-scaled Type 3
fonts which TrueType doesn’t recognize and ATM can’t
contain... or you’re creating professional fonts for
distribution and since ATM and TrueType don’t render well
at the smaller point sizes (say below 12 points), you might
want to hand-edit them yourself to achieve more readable
character images. Or maybe you just like playing with pixels.
Using the Bitmap Window
You can use the Bitmap Window as a tool to improve the
look of a font on the screen. It is composed of a series of
Fontographer User's Manual
4: Editing Bitmaps Page #1