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General Discussion / Pixel font/character filters
« on: September 09, 2015, 04:58:45 am »
I've recently been exploring the design space of pixel fonts and compiling some reference sheets.
This one is about filters suitable for use in helping create variants of pixel fonts:

(intended viewing zoom : 200 - 400%; Palette is the excellent Solarized)
The easiest way to try them out is via GIMP (2.8+) and the GMIC plugin for GIMP (packaged separately). At least some of them are available in other software (eg. GrafX2).
Overall, morphological operations (dilate, erode, opening, closing) are heavily emphasized. Value Propagate is especially high.. value, since it allows you to limit the direction of propagation of the erode or dilate operations, which allows you to thin or thicken vertical or horizontal strokes independently (cf. the 'military' variant done by thinning horizontal strokes)
I tried to be pretty exhaustive in searching for relevant filters, but if you have another filter that's relevant, I'm happy to update the sheet.
This one is about filters suitable for use in helping create variants of pixel fonts:

(intended viewing zoom : 200 - 400%; Palette is the excellent Solarized)
The easiest way to try them out is via GIMP (2.8+) and the GMIC plugin for GIMP (packaged separately). At least some of them are available in other software (eg. GrafX2).
Overall, morphological operations (dilate, erode, opening, closing) are heavily emphasized. Value Propagate is especially high.. value, since it allows you to limit the direction of propagation of the erode or dilate operations, which allows you to thin or thicken vertical or horizontal strokes independently (cf. the 'military' variant done by thinning horizontal strokes)
I tried to be pretty exhaustive in searching for relevant filters, but if you have another filter that's relevant, I'm happy to update the sheet.