A Word About Font Copyright

All of the fonts on FIG come from free font sites such as Dafont. Most, but not all, are licensed "free for non-commercial use" or something similar to that in a text file that is part of the download. You can use the fonts here for personal projects, blogs, etc. without much concern.

If you decide to use an image created on FIG in a commercial way however, you need to check the license of the fonts you're using. In many cases, a license fee, attribution credit, or some other action is required to compensate the font author for commercial use.

Here's an example of commercial use... You create an image on FIG, put it into a t-shirt design and then sell the t-shirts at CafePress. Another one might be if you compose clipart using font images made on FIG and then sell the clipart on a CD.

US Copyright law places the burden on the user to make sure they have rights for the intended use of a font. The fact that a font was available on FIG doesn't matter. Laws outside US may be different so check locally.

You can download and read the license file by going to the download site for that font. Click the button on the right-hand toolbar when the font in question is the current font.

Some fonts do not include a text file in the download. FIG assumes these to be free for non-commercial use. For commercial use however, you need to figure out who the author is and contact them directly to find out about rights. If you can't establish rights, its best to pick a different font rather than to receive a cease and desist letter from an author's attorney.

Color Replacer

A color replacer tool has been added to the Effects Library (click the button on he toolbar).

Thanks Nancy for the suggestion!

The effect replaces the foreground color with the background color as set using the color picker. It has a tolerance control and an inverse capability too.

Try it out on an uploaded photo for some interesting results

FIG 'Pro' Subscription Site?

Is anybody interested in a Font Image Generator 'Pro' site for a small subscription fee? The site would have advanced features like a larger canvas size, ability to save and recall images, workspace setup, upload your own fonts, direct linking, on-the-fly dynamic image generation, no Google ads, etc.

FIG is currently doing about as much as it can under the free system. If there is enough interest, a subscription site can be developed.

Please post a comment with your thoughts on the idea. Please include features you'd like to see.

Thanks
Jeff

Linking to Font Image Generator

You can link directly to a font, dingbat, or category in FIG by specifying target information in the URL querystring. The target information is obtained by clicking the button at the lower left corner of the application. When linking this way, FIG will load into the browser with the FontFinder or DingMapper open to the font, dingbat, or category that you specify. You can easily email a targeted link if you want to share something you see on FIG.

Here are a few examples with the link URL shown:

Click here to see unique fonts with the following link URL: http://interactimage.com?focus=119

This link displays all the New fonts:
http://interactimage.com?focus=new

This link displays all the New dingbats:
http://interactimage.com?dfocus=new

This link displays all the dingbats in the artifacts (103) category
http://interactimage.com?dfocus=103

The examples above link to specific categories in the FontFinder or DingMapper.

You can also link to an individual font or dingbat as follows:

Click here to go to the font Nutshell Library. The link URL is:
http://interactimage.com/?search=NutshellLibrary

This one goes to the dingbat Panda
http://interactimage.com?dsearch=panda

In summary,go to the font, dingbat, or category you want to link to, click the button, cut and paste the name or category number from the setup information displayed and add it to the URL as shown above.

Semi-Transparent Effect

A new effect has been added to the ImageMagick library that converts a .PNG image to semi-transparent. The opacity of the effect can be adjusted for various purposes such as watermarking another image.

Font & Dingbat Releases

Rather than posting new fonts and dingbats monthly, they'll now be posted on a regular basis with announcements here in the blog on the right-hand column and at TwitPic and Twitter where you can follow FIG or sign up for a feed.

Font Search, Favorites

Update:
Favorites and font search are now available. Buttons for these are found on the font finder and ding mapper. You'll need an account to use them as your favorites are associated with a user name you log in with. Registration is free.

Font search is also available and supports search by entering all or part of a font name. Keyword search will be added later.

Facebook and TwitPic upload available now.

Update: A lot of folks are registering for a FIG account but not entering their mobile addresses. To add or change your Facebook or TwitPic mobile address after you've registered, click to the settings menu from the login screen to access the necessary form.


Now you can upload images from FIG directly to TwitPic/Twitter and Facebook by using the mobile photo upload feature from those services.

Here's how to do it:

For TwitPic, go to http://twitpic.com/ Register for an account if necessary and log in. At the upper right, click on Upload photo. On the Upload photo page, you'll find the email address that uploads photos via email directly into your account. Take note of that email address.

For Facebook, go to http://www.facebook.com/mobile/ and log in to your account. On the Facebook Mobile page in the section labeled Upload Photos via Email find and take note of your personal upload email.

You'll need to set up a free account on FIG. This allows FIG to save your mobile upload addresses. To register, click the login | register button at the upper-left corner of the FIG screen. Complete the form including your mobile upload email addresses and your FIG login will be emailed to you.

To post to Facebook or TwitPic, create your image in FIG and click on the email button. On the email screen, click the Facebook or TwitPic icon and your upload address will be filled in automatically. Use the Subject line to add a caption for your image and click send. Your image will now be posted to Facebook in the "mobile uploads" album with an update on your wall or to TwitPic with a Tweet containing the image link.

If you have any problems with registration or use of the feature, please post here.

August Fonts

>Unique-1
>Grunge
>Script
>Gothica
>Unique-1
>Gothica
>Gothica
>Artistic
>Serif

Coming soon: send images to Facebook, Twitter, etc.

In the coming weeks, features will be added allowing you to transmit images directly to various social networking sites, like Twitter and Facebook. Also, Flickr, and the other major image hosting sites will likely be supported.

Coding has just begun on the project so if you have any suggestions or requests, please post here.

~Jeff

Disk uploads available on the toolbar

After an extended overhaul, disk uploads are available once again. The button is found at the middle of the toolbar. Images up to 500k can be uploaded from the local computer into the FIG foreground.

Please post a comment if you have any trouble using the feature.

Text Effects in the Library

Update: Text effects has been taken out of service because there were too many bugs. I'll release it again after some of the problems are cleared up.

A new set of text distortion effects is available in the ImageMagick library. Click the "IM" button on the toolbar to open the library. These effects generate a new image when applied rather than altering the current image. They're also a bit slow, usually taking about 5 seconds to return a result. Settings used by the tool are taken from the FIG control panel.

Email not working

Update: the problem is resolved. please post a comment here if you have any problems.

On Friday, July 3 afternoon, The email function in FIG is not working with an error message ...cannot connect to SMTP host. I don't know why but am looking into it.

~Jeff

July Fonts

> Unique-1
> Artistic
> Comic

Disk Uploads

You may have noticed a button missing from the toolbar in FIG. Its the disk upload button that allowed you to upload images directly from your hard disk to the server.

After being exploited by a few people, it had to be removed for security reasons. I still plan to offer this feature in the future after I figure out how to block illicit use from wiping out the site.

You can still upload images from website such as Flickr, Photobucket, etc. as those images can be verified as valid before they reach the FIG servers.

~Jeff

Effects Library Returns

Click the button on the toolbar to access the ImageMagick effects library.

In the library you have access to a (growing) variety of user-configurable effects that can be used with your images. Feel free to try out different settings and combinations. I'll be adding additional effects on a regular basis and posting a notice about it here in the blog.

If you've used FIG in the past, you may know that this control once provided a wide-open editor to the ImageMagick installation that runs FIG. Unfortunately a few people abused it and FIG's accounts were all cancelled as a result of the exploit. The new version of the tool still provides access to settings for each effect but no longer allows direct command line enty.

The new servers where FIG resides allow much greater flexibility as to what features can be integrated into the site. You can look forward to some interesting new things in the near future.
~Jeff

June Fonts

>SansSerif
>Handwriting

Web Images are Back

Uploading of web images has been restored on a trial basis. Web uploads were the source of several hack attacks on FIG that ended with the hosting provider kicking FIG off the server.

Some security enhancements were done and service is restored.

I'll monitor for issues & hopefully none will appear.

Next up: Disk uploads

Follow FIG on Twitter

Beginning today, I'll be posting FIG status and updates on Twitter in addition to the blog

May Fonts

>Artistic
>Handwriting
>Unique
>Unique
>Artistic
>Grunge
>Unique (Note:All caps)
>Unique
> Grunge

Hacker Attacks

Update: Thursday evening. FIG has been running pretty well today. I made some modifications to reduce sensitivity to errors and hackers. Still watching closely. Looking for some new fonts for the May font update. Any requests?

Update: Weds. afternoon. No further problems observed since shutting down image upload. Still watching closely.

FIG has been up (mostly) for going on two days but there have been several periods of downtime along the way due to hacker attacks. Recovery from these periods required a server restart to be done manually. We're investigating this now. Meanwhile image upload features have been disabled as it appears that is the avenue being used by hackers to exploit the site.

FIG is (not,maybe) back. Status.

Update: Monday afternoon. The site is up again running ImageMagick 6.5.2. Service looks good but I may have noticed a few lags in response when several users were on at the same time. I'm monitoring this closely.

Update: Monday morning. imageMagick is back and running. Right now cleaning up some other issues and should have the site back online early this afternoon.

Update: Sunday. Nothing new to report. Looks like the support group isn't having much luck with solving the problem. I Googled around some and found that ImageMagick doesn't install on this server operating system without some special black magic.

Update: Saturday evening. ImageMagick is being recompiled right now. Some configuration was done wrong on the first go around. Once its done, I'll be doing some testing before the site is turned back on. Fingers crossed. Next update Sunday morning.

Update: Saturday morning. This is not going well. The ImageMagic Upgrade doesn't work and the data center was down all night doing router upgrades so no work could be done to fix the problem. I'm still unable to log in to the server even though some web pages like the site down page are working. Nothing else to report at this time.

Update: Friday evening: Well the ImageMagick upgrade was completed but doesn't work. The old version was wiped in the process so now there is nothing. Working on it. Updates soon.


Updated Friday afternoon PDT.

Hi everyone. FIG is now running on the new server. Things are looking pretty good. There were a few minor DNS issues that were resolved. The support group is working to install the ImageMagick upgrade right now and I'll begin testing it as soon as they're finished.

The list below shows the status of several items outstanding after the transfer along with a few changes that were implemented along the way.

Please post comments if you see problems.

Status:

1. ImageMagick is at version 6.2.8 (as delivered on the server) I'll update this to 6.5.2 as soon as I can.
2. Disabled the ImageMagick editor where users have direct access to the IM command line. The script library needs to be tweaked in several places. On hold till the ImageMagick update
   
3. Upload from desktop is disabled until a few security issues are worked out.
4. Freehand draw is disabled until the ImageMagick update is done.
   
5. ImageMagick working canvas is set to 640 x 480. If this causes problems for you, please leave a comment.
   
6. Changed the default image format from PNG to JPEG. You can always open the control panel and set it to PNG if necessary. JPEG saves a lot of bandwidth.
   
7. Text string lengthis limited to 140 characters or less. Likewise leave a comment.
   
8. Turned off PNG compression and filtering. PNGs are uncompressed.
   
9. Turned on JPEG compression (quality 80)

New Server Coming Soon

Update: Tuesday night 5-May. I couldn;t solve the speed problem so started all over again with a different server located at a different place. FIG is running again now at normal speed.

I now have to finish transferring the font library, test everything, and switch DNS to the new server. FIG should be back online by end of this week.

Update: Sunday night 3-May . I have FIG set up and "running" on the new server. Its a virtual dedicated server provided by a hosting company. Only problem is that for some reason ImageMagick is taking between one and two minutes to generate a simple image. I've been working with the tech support staff to resolve the issue but no luck yet. You would think it easy to find a problem where an image that should be generated in less than one second takes 2 minutes.

Any server admins out there want to lend a hand? I could use some help.

~Jeff

FIG will reopen soon on a new server. I've just started setting up FIG on a new server as will reopen ASAP. Hopefully I'll be able to undo the changes made trying to keep the site alive on the old host and the site will run faster too.

I don't know much about setting up a server so this will take a bit of time.

Stay tuned here and to the site for updates.

~Jeff

Server overload

FIG has been shut down again because of server overload. Its not the first time. The old site is UP and will continue to operate.

FIG makes use of ImageMagick to generate images. The old site does not. ImageMagick is a server based image processor that frankly is a resource hog. Often times there are several users on FIG at the same time. When numerous requests hit ImageMagick at the same time, the server can't keep up. The server is a shared server where other websites are trying to operate as well. When FIG sucks up all the resources, all the sites on the server suffer, people complain, and the hosting company goes after the offender. Thats FIG.

I've made an inquiry at the hosting company about moving to a dedicated server. Its expensive. FIG is free. Those Google ads pay for coffee and thats about it.

Is anyone willing to pay a small subscription fee of a few dollars per month for FIG to keep operating and add new features, fonts, etc? If so please leave a comment here.

Please check back here for updates about FIG status.

~Jeff

Technical Issues

Update (Final): The following changes have been made to FIG to reduce server load and allow the hosting company to restore service:

1. Changed the ImageMagick working canvas from 800x600 to 480x320
2. Changed the default image format from PNG to JPEG
3. Limit text string length to 140 characters or less
4. Turned off PNG compression and filtering
5. Turned on JPEG compression (quality 80)
6. Disabled the ImageMagick editor where users have direct access to the IM command line. Will work to restore the IM editor in the next few days.
7. Update ImageMagick to version 6.5.1

The site should be available again late today 4-28-09

Update: A set of changes has been put in place to reduce server load. I'm waiting to hear back from the hosting company if they will restore site operation.

Update: The hosting company made several suggestions to solve the problem. When the changes are in place, FIG will be restored to service. I'll try to have this done in the next 24 hrs.


I received a notice today that Font Image Generator places excessive server load on the shared host where its located. Because of this, the key scripts that power FIG have been disabled rendering the site up but non-functional.

The issue has to do with FIG's use of ImageMagick to generate images. Apparently, FIG's use of ImageMagick at such high volume is not anticipated when offering it as a feature on a shared host.

The old site is still up and running and you are encouraged to use it until the issues are resolved.

I'm working with the tech support folks at my hosting company to see if there is any way I can modify the site to bring server load into line with their requirements. I hope to have a solution in hand later today.

I hope you'll stay with the site as the problems are worked out. Meanwhile head on over to the old site and I'll post updates here.

~Jeff

April Fonts

> Valentine
>unique
>comic
>unique
>unique
>Easter
>graffiti
> graffiti
>graffiti
>SanSerif
>Grunge

Download Link Button

A new button is available on the Fx bar at the right side of the FIG screen. When you click on it, a new window opens to a download location where you can download the current font to your local machine. Works for character fonts only. Not dingbats at the moment.

At the moment there are 492 character fonts on FIG with about 95% of them linked this way to a download source. All future fonts will be downloadable.

The font download files aren't hosted on FIG. For most fonts, numerous download sites can be found so why duplicate? My favorite is Dafont.com mostly because the search tools wok the best.

Please make a bug report if you notice any problems or bad links with the new feature.

~Jeff

March Fonts