19 Jan 2009
Older dot matrix printers created text and images by printing a series of dots of different tones to create the image. While newer printers are capable of much higher resolution, you may wish to create the classic dot matrix effect on your photos to achieve a retro look. 348 Best Matrix Free Brush Downloads from the Brusheezy community. Matrix Free Brushes licensed under creative commons, open source, and more! With over 8,000 freeware fonts, you've come to the best place to download fonts! Most fonts on this site are freeware, some are shareware or linkware. Some fonts provided are trial versions of full versions and may not allow embedding unless a commercial license is purchased or may contain a. A 'pseudo' 5x7 dot matrix font (albeit not really), which is designed in a manner to increase readability as in a sans serif font like Arial. The reason it's called 'RNTG' is because it's the work for a fictional communication standard. Update (12 Nov '17): Support for the Greek alphabet added. This is a clone.
A while ago I needed to scan a faded report that was printed in 1989 on a 9-pin dot-matrix printer. However, current optical character recognition (OCR) software seems to work best on freshly-produced laser printer documents. After much trial and error, I developed a method of processing the images of the scanned pages to improve the accuracy of the ReadIris Pro 8 OCR application when recognizing faded, dot-matrix printouts.
I scanned the dot matrix printouts at 300dpi and saved them as greyscale images with 256 shade of grey. I used Photoshop to connect the matrix of dots to make each letter more closely resemble the solid letters that ReadIris Pro is able to recognize more accurately.
I connected the dots in four steps:
- Scan the document;
- Find the edges of the dots that make up each letter;
- Threshold the greyscale image to produce a black & white image; and
- Blur the black & white image to connect the dots.
I then used ReadIris Pro to recognize the text in the image produced in stage 4 using the following settings:
- Settings > Font Type Dot Matrix
- Settings > Character Pitch Automatic
The following steps show the results of applying each stage to the top-left portion of a scan of a faded, dot-matrix printout.
Step 1: Scan the Document
Scan the document at 300dpi and save it as a 256 greyscale levels image.
Step 2: Find the Edges
Select Filter > Stylize > Find Edges to apply the Find Edges filter to the image scanned in at step 1.
Step 3: Threshold the Greyscale Image
Select Image > Adjust > Threshold to apply a threshold of 200 to the image produced at step 2.
Step 4: Blur the Black & White Image
Select Filter > Blur > Blur More to apply the Blur More filter to the image produced at step 3.
I don’t have any figures—such as the increase in the number of characters correctly identified—to evaluate the performance of my method. However, it did reduce the number of incorrect characters.
Stock fonts in Adobe Photoshop won’t satisfy professional designers for long. Sometimes designers wish to download and use novel and striking fonts for their outstanding designs other than pre-installed ones. However, figuring out how to add new fonts still troubles many designers. In nature, adding fonts to Photoshop means adding them to the hard drive of your computer. Thus, it just takes some simple clicks.
Below are steps to add fonts to Photoshop in detail.
Add Fonts to Photoshop on Windows
1. Download the new font to your computer
Look for a free font or purchase your favorite one. In this post, Ugo – Display Font provided for free this week on MakiPlace will be used (1 free font provided weekly). You can choose the free or paid one as long as it suits your taste.
Download and save the font. It would be the easiest to save it on your desktop. However, the font can be saved anywhere you want.
2. Extract and view the font file
Right click on the downloaded zip folder, click Extract.
Then, in the extracted folder, find the Photoshop font by navigating the file with the extensions: .otf, .ttf, .pbf, .pfm
3. Install the new font
Right-click on the font file in the extracted zip folder and choose Install. You can click and select to install more than one file at a time.
In case there is no option Install when right-clicking on the font file, you can access Control Panel to add the font to Photoshop by following these steps:
- Go to Start Menu, click on Control Panel
- Click on Appearance and Personalization
- Click on Fonts
- Right-click on the list of fonts and select Install New Font
- Select the fonts you want and hit OK when finishing
Add Fonts to Photoshop on macOS
1. Download the new font to your computer
Search on the Internet to find a suitable font for Mac, paid or free, or you can take a look here – a good collection of fonts.
Then click to download and save the font on your desktop or anywhere at your convenience.
2. Close all active applications
Epson Dot Matrix Font
Close all active applications, especially those where you will use the font. You can begin working with them after finishing the installation.
3. View the font file in Font Book
Double click to open the downloaded zip folder, then double click on the font file which ends in .otf or .ttf to open the font in Font Book.
Dot Matrix Printer Font Commodore
4. Install the new font
When the font file appears in Font Book, simply click Install Font to install. That’s all and you don’t have to worry about the rest.
You can also manually place the font by going to your font libraries in Finder. There are 2 places that you can put the font in.
5x7 Dot Matrix Font
- /Library/Fonts/
- /Users/<username>/Library/Fonts/
After finding the location, just click and drag the font file into the folder.
Finishing the above steps, you’re all set. Re-open the Photoshop to check and use the new font. Good luck with your project!
9 Pin Dot Matrix Font
We also have an article related to fonts you may be interested in: “Convert Font to Webfont with Transfonter“. Also if you want to download fonts you can click on the button below: