When we talk about online font identifying website, the first website that comes to our mind is WhatTheFont by MyFonts. And recently, there is another new font identifying website called What Font is. With both website we can upload a picture or use image URL to identify a font we don’t know. But how accurate they are?
In this article, I would like to compare both WhatTheFont and What Font Is font identification service and to see which one is better and more accurate. To be more precise, I will do the test three times as well as evaluating the usability of the website too.
Web Interface
I can say that both sites has almost similar functions and very usable. You can upload a font picture from your PC or paste in the image URL to proceed to next step. Also, in both sites you can have tips and picture guidance on the image you plan to upload for the best result. However, one thing extra in What Font Is is the option of identify for commercial fonts only, or free fonts only or both.
Round One
In this test, I used the type image from Apple website. We know Apple always use Myriad font for their websites, but how both website performed?
WhatTheFont
As you can see the font is in white while background is in black. WTF able to recognize the shape of the font. However, the site is going to detail by identifying the “i” as two separate character. WTF also able to identify almost all of the characters.
Here is the result of the font identification. Nope, no Myriad is listed in the top three result, however the first matches seems to be very close match.
What Font is
One thing good about WFi is that you can invert the color of the font if the font is in negative color. However the system cannot pre-identify the characters so you have to key in one by one. Picture above shows after I fill up the blanks.
Here is the result. As you can see the result is not really accurate as the second matches is totally out. For 1st round, WhatTheFont clearly has the closer result although it didn’t get the right font.
Round Two
WhatTheFont
In round two, I use the famous Google logo. WTF is able to identify most of the characters even is in varieties of colors, in this case just the yellow “o” of the logo can’t be pre-identified.
While the result, WTF successfully matches the result! It is very close even I don’t know what is the real Google font but now I knew the what the font used from the result. Well done.
What Font is
While in WFi, the colorful logo now reduced to a black and white image. It can only work in black and white mode.
While the result, clearly it is no match for WhatTheFont. For this round two, WhatTheFont wins again.
Round Three
WhatTheFont
For the third round, I use a popular free font called “alba” to run the test. WTF still able to identify each charcters despite it was so close to each other. While the result, there is no correct matches but again the results are pretty close.
What Font is
What Font is can’t identify the characters and display them in a piece. I even separated the characters with bigger space but still in same result. Not sure what went wrong here.
Conclusion
After the 3 rounds of tests, clearly seen that WhatTheFont is the better choice for font identification because of its powerful system and high accuracy and consistent result. But you can still use What Font Is as it might give you some really interesting and accurate result?
