Ever see a logo or font when you’re surfing the web — or just out and about — that catches your eye? Wouldn’t it be great to identify the font, right then and there? With the new, improved WhatTheFont online service from our friends at Bitstream and MyFonts.com, you can do just that… and do it for FREE!

WhatTheFont has been around for years, and it’s a go-to choice for identifying fonts. But if you haven’t used WhatTheFont recently, you should definitely take another look. The new version of WhatTheFont allows you to upload images from your browser or iPhone app and have the online service on MyFonts.com do the analysis for you.

See a font you like at a local restuarant? Snap its picture and upload it to WhatTheFont. You’ll get back a WYSIWYG list of potential matches that give you font clarity fast. Instead of going home from dinner feeling empty, you can stay for dessert and celebrate your newfound font.

So font lovers rejoice. The latest version of WhatTheFont makes it simple to identify your favorite fonts. Give it a try… and then have dessert.

Simple and Fun Way to Identify Fonts

WhatTheFont is surprisingly simple to use. Here’s what you need to do to get in on the fun…

First, use your mobile phone or digital camera to take a picture of the type in question. For this example, we’re using a window sign for Michelle’s, a coffee shop that caught our eye and tastebuds.

We could upload the image as is, but because there is a lot of background “noise” behind the type we are going to clean up the image a bit in Photoshop. According to the WhatTheFont tips page, the preferred image type is a greyscale tiff. So we selected the type using Photoshop’s magic wand tool and filled the selection with black, and then selected the inverse and filled that area with white to get the image below:

Now we have an image that is ready to upload to WhatTheFont. To get to the page to upload the image click here.

After we uploaded the file (you can also just specify a URL for the file), we click Continue and proceed to the character selection page. In a lot of cases, WhatTheFont already can tell what a character is, but where there is some doubt, it asks us to identify various letters.

If an image does not contain a valid character, just leave the text box blank.

After identifying all the characters, we continue to the results page where we find that WhatTheFont has found five possible matches, all of which look acceptable.

Call on the Community for Help

If WhatTheFont does not find a satisfactory match you can take your case to the WhatTheFont Forum where you can have your font evaluated by font geeks from all over the world, or try Identifont which can help you find a matching font by answering a series of questions about the letter shapes in the typeface you wish to identify.

So the next time you are in a restaurant and can’t eat because the font on the menu or front door is driving you crazy, just take its picture and have some dessert. The tools and community you need to find fascinating fonts are online waiting for you to finish that crème brûlée.

Download the iPhone Version of WhatTheFont

Interested in seeing how the iPhone version of WhatThe Font works? Just download the app and try it yourself!

For more information about tools to help you manage and preview your fonts, go to www.insidersoftware.com.