How to Identify a Font from an Image
Found a font you love in a photo or screenshot? Here's how to identify it in seconds, plus tips that make any font finder more accurate.
You spot a great font on a poster, a menu or an Instagram post, and you want it for your own project. The good news: you don’t need to know anything about typography to find out what it is. With a clear image and the right tool, you can usually get an answer in under a minute.
This guide shows the fastest way to identify a font from an image, then covers the small tricks that make the difference between a perfect match and a frustrating guess.
The quick way: use a font identifier
- Get a clear image of the text. A screenshot is best. If it’s a photo, shoot it straight on and in good light, so the letters aren’t slanted or blurry.
- Upload it to Whatsdafont. You can also drag the image in, or paste a screenshot with Ctrl+V (Cmd+V on a Mac).
- Draw a box around one line of text. Cropping to a single word or line in one font gives much sharper results.
- Press “Identify font.” You’ll get up to six matches, ranked by how closely they fit, each with a live preview.
- Compare and choose. Type your own words into the preview box to test the candidates, then click “Get font” on the winner.
That’s all most images need. If the result isn’t quite right, the tips below will help.
6 tips for a better match
Crop to one font. Posters and logos often mix two or three typefaces. If your crop includes both a headline and a tagline, the tool has to guess which one you mean.
Pick distinctive letters. Letters like a, g, R, Q, y and the ampersand (&) vary a lot between fonts. A word like “Quality” tells a font finder far more than “ILLINOIS” or a row of numbers.
Make the letters big. Aim for letters at least 40 pixels tall. Zoom in before you take the screenshot, rather than enlarging a tiny image afterwards.
Straighten and flatten. Text on a curved bottle, or photographed at an angle, is distorted. Choose the flattest view you can find.
Keep contrast high. Dark text on a light background, or the reverse, works best. A busy photo behind the letters hides their shapes.
Watch out for effects. Outlines, shadows, 3D and textures change the edges of letters. If you can, crop an area where the effect is lightest.
What if there’s no exact match?
Sometimes the lettering was never a font at all. Many logos are drawn by hand, and designers often stretch, cut or redraw letters to make them unique. In those cases, the best answer is the closest font you can actually download. We explain this in Why Logo Fonts Are So Hard to Identify.
You’ll also find that the exact match is sometimes a paid font. Whatsdafont shows close free alternatives alongside it, so you can choose based on your budget.
Know the style first (it helps)
Before you upload, it helps to know the broad family you’re looking at: serif, sans-serif, script, display or monospace. Knowing that a font is a “geometric sans-serif,” for example, narrows thousands of options to a few dozen.
Our guide to types of fonts explains how to tell them apart. Font Anatomy: 12 Terms covers the details type experts look at, like x-height and terminals.
Check the license before you use it
Found your font? Check how you’re allowed to use it. Many free fonts are “free for personal use” only, which rules out client work, products and ads. Fonts from Google Fonts are open source and can be used commercially. Font Licenses Explained covers the basics in plain English.
Try it now
Got an image ready? Identify your font on Whatsdafont. It’s free, there’s no sign-up, and your image is never saved.