Custom Fonts

Easy Scanlate supports custom fonts for professional comic and manga typesetting. This guide covers adding fonts, supported formats, and troubleshooting font issues.

Adding Custom Fonts

Location

Place font files in the assets/fonts/ directory within your Easy Scanlate installation folder.

Default installation path:

C:\Program Files\EasyScanlate\assets\fonts\

Or if running from source:

EasyScanlate/assets/fonts/

Supported Font Formats

Both formats work identically within Easy Scanlate.

Adding Fonts Step-by-Step

1. Locate Font Files

   • Download fonts from reputable sources
   • Ensure you have proper licensing for your use case

2. Copy to Fonts Directory

   • Navigate to assets/fonts/
   • Copy your .ttf or .otf files into this folder

3. Restart Easy Scanlate

   • Fonts are loaded at startup
   • New fonts won’t appear until you restart the application

4. Verify Installation

   • Open a project
   • Select any text box
   • Open the Text Box Style Panel
   • Check the Font Family dropdown - your fonts should appear in the list

Using Custom Fonts

Selecting a Font

1. Click a text box on the image to select it
2. In the Text Box Style Panel, find the Font Family dropdown
3. Select your custom font from the list
4. Changes apply immediately

Font Style Selection

When a font has multiple styles (variants), a Font Style dropdown appears:

• Regular - Normal weight
• Bold - Heavy weight
• Italic - Slanted style
• Bold Italic - Combined

Not all fonts include all styles. If a style is unavailable, the dropdown will be disabled.

Default Font Behavior

The “Default (System Font)” option routes to AnimeAce, a comic/manga-optimized font. This provides:

• Good readability at small sizes
• Natural comic book aesthetic
• Works well with speech bubbles

If no custom fonts are available, the application falls back to system defaults.

Recommended Fonts for Comics/Manga

Free Comic Fonts

Finding Fonts

• Blambot (blambot.com) - Comic fonts (free for indie projects)
• Google Fonts - Search “comic” or “display” categories
• FontSquirrel - Free commercial-use fonts

Always check licensing terms before using fonts in published work.

Font Styling Tips

Size and Auto-Sizing

• Auto Font Size (default): Automatically fits text to the text box
• Manual Size: Disable auto-sizing and set specific point size (6-200)
• Smaller fonts (10-16pt) for fine print, larger (20-40pt) for dialogue

Text Stroke (Outline)

Adding an outline improves readability:

• Width: 1-3 pixels for subtle, 4-6 for bold
• Color: White stroke on dark text, black stroke on light text
• Use stroke to make text pop against busy backgrounds

Bold and Italic

• Bold: Good for emphasis, shouting, or important dialogue
• Italic: Good for thoughts, emphasis, or foreign words
• These work best when the font includes true bold/italic styles (not synthetic)

Alignment

• Center: Most common for speech bubbles
• Left: For narration boxes or long text blocks
• Right: Rare, but useful for specific design choices

Troubleshooting Font Issues

Font Doesn’t Appear in List

Cause: Application hasn’t been restarted since adding font

Solution: Close and reopen Easy Scanlate

Font Shows Incorrect Characters

Cause: Font doesn’t support the target language/characters

Solution: Use a font with proper Unicode support for your language (e.g., fonts with CJK support for Chinese/Japanese/Korean)

Font Looks Blurry or Pixelated

Possible Causes:

• Font is being rendered too small
• Image resolution is low

Solutions:

• Increase font size
• Enable text stroke for definition
• Check if auto-font-size is calculating incorrectly (try manual size)

Bold/Italic Buttons Don’t Work

Cause: Font lacks bold/italic variants

Solution:

• Some fonts include separate files (e.g., FontName-Bold.ttf)
• Install all variants in assets/fonts/
• Or use the Font Style dropdown if available

Text Doesn’t Fit in Box

Solutions:

1. Enable Auto Font Size to automatically shrink text
2. Resize the text box by dragging handles
3. Edit text to be more concise
4. Manually reduce font size

Application Crashes When Selecting Font

Cause: Corrupted or incompatible font file

Solution:

1. Remove recently added fonts from assets/fonts/
2. Restart application
3. Re-add fonts one by one to identify the problematic file
4. Re-download the problematic font from a different source

Font Organization Tips

Naming Conventions

Use descriptive names when organizing fonts:

assets/fonts/
├── Comic/
│   ├── AnimeAce.ttf
│   ├── WildWords.ttf
│   └── Komika.ttf
├── Display/
│   ├── Impact.ttf
│   └── BebasNeue.ttf
└── Script/
    └── Handwritten.ttf

Easy Scanlate reads all subdirectories in assets/fonts/.

Font Presets

Save frequently used font combinations as presets:

1. Select a text box
2. Configure your preferred:
   • Font family
   • Font size
   • Text color
   • Stroke settings
   • Background style
3. Click ”+” in the Presets section
4. Name the preset descriptively (e.g., “Main Dialogue”, “Narration”, “Sound Effects”)

Apply presets instantly to maintain consistent styling across your project.

Performance Considerations

Font Loading

• Fonts are loaded at startup
• Large numbers of fonts (>100) may slightly increase startup time
• Font files over 10MB may impact performance

Memory Usage

• Fonts are loaded into memory as needed
• Complex OpenType fonts with many glyphs use more memory
• Generally not an issue unless working with hundreds of fonts

Best Practices

• Keep only fonts you actively use in assets/fonts/
• Archive unused fonts elsewhere
• Use web-optimized font variants when available (smaller file size)

Summary

Custom fonts are a powerful way to give your translated comics a professional, polished look that matches the original style.