Make Semi Bold and Bold fonts

rsdk

currently I made regular fonts on fontlab8. How do I make the same fonts available in semi Bold and bold options?

Tural Alisoy

This may help you. https://help.fontlab.com/fontlab/8/tutorials/calfonts/7. Families, Variations, Interpolations/7b-2c Making Instances/

donat raetzo

You can design more wheights as seperate fonts or design the Bold version to be variable (new master, matching outlines with your Regular), then interpolate the SemiBold. It seems you need at least two masters to inter- or extrapolate (see Tural's post). 

Yves Michel

For a simple demonstration, I'll start from a lonely Regular master (weight: 400) and add an Extra Bold one (weight:800).

I have only have one master, so

• I create a new master:

1. I go into the "File > Font info" dialog
2. I create a new master by using the + sign (on the left, under my Regular master) > "Duplicate Master, copy glyph layers"
3. I change the name of my new master to "Extra Bold"
4. I Change the "Weight class" of the new master from the original "Regular/400" to "Extra Bold/800)
5. I click on "Build Names"
6. I change the "Master name" to "Extra Bold"
7. I click "OK" to close the "Font info" dialog

• I change the weight of my new master:

1. I open my uppercase "I" (stem: ±100) for trial
2. I use "Actions > Adjust > Change weight > Simple" with a value of 25
3. I click "OK"
4. The result is an "I" with a stem of ± 200 (acceptable result for me)
5. I undo this Action on "I" and then apply it on all my glyphs.
6. Rem.: This doesn't exempt me to verify all my new glyphs.

When I'm satisfied with my 2 masters, I can use them to create other masters or instances through interpolation.

Yves Michel

Of course, this is an example. You have to play with the Change Weight value to reach the good one!

Yves Michel

Additionally, I would suggest to consult the Fontlab 8 forum and maybe some tutorials on the Fontlab software!

Thomas Phinney

I would strongly recommend doing considerable manual work after doing some sort of automated adjustment to the stroke weight. The automatic adjustment will not produce great results; it is more of a starting point.

Yves Michel

Yves Michel said:

1. Rem.: This doesn't exempt me to verify all my new glyphs.

When I'm satisfied with my 2 masters, ...

Thank you Thomas! You completed my remark.

But I would be interested to learn a more efficient method.

John Hudson

Of the various methods I have used over the years, my favourite was using Karsten Lücke’s Glyph Tweak tool in FLS5 to rough in weights and proportions, and then to use FLS5’s Interpolate Nodes tool to fit my initial master outlines to those weights and proportions, making adjustments to things like serif weight/length and join tapers as I went.

FL8 now has a very good Delta Filter tool that functions quite like the Interpolate Nodes tool, but I am not sure there is yet anything that works quite like Karsten’s sledgehammer.

Yves Michel

Thanks John!
I still have Studio 5 on my PC but I didn't find the Glyph Tweak tool you mention.
It seems to be obsolete. I only found https://kltf.de/kltf_otproduction.shtml 

Kent Lew

I lamented the loss of Interpolate Nodes when I had to [reluctantly] leave FLS5 behind. News of this Delta filter might just get me to move back to FontLab. (But just as I was getting comfortable in a different environment … 🫤.)

John Hudson

The Delta filter is great. I use it daily when in the outline editing stage.

It works quite like Interpolate Nodes, but now you can constrain x,y interpolation direction so each node can have one of five states: moved, locked, locked x, locked y, or fully interpolated.