FFSMC Crea Pol Lab: organise your fonts, find the one in a photo, create your own

Three things. It organises all your fonts and lets you try them, even if there are thousands. It finds the name of a font seen in a photo, a scan, a PDF or on screen. And it makes your own font from a few letters: those of an old poster, a plate, hand-drawn lettering, or your own handwriting.

No. A guided tour shows you the home screen the first time you start it, every button has its help bubble, and examples are supplied. The illustrated user manual takes you step by step: read it once from start to finish with the software open beside it, and in about an hour you will know how to do everything.

Yes. Download the installer from this page: Crea Pol Lab works for 7 days with every function, the font workshop included, free of charge. The number of days left is shown at the top right of the window.

You buy the licence once, with no subscription: €59 for Essential, €89 for Complete, €119 for Studio (Complete on 3 computers). Updates are included for one year.

No. Crea Pol Lab is software for Windows 10 and 11, 64-bit.

Only to activate the licence, to search for free fonts on the Web, and now and then to check the licence. Everything else works without Internet: the library, recognition with your own fonts, the workshop.

Click the “Recognise a font” tile on the home screen and choose the photo, scan or PDF. You can also drag the image into the dotted frame, or paste it with Ctrl+V. The software reads each line of text and compares it with every font on the computer. For each line, the nearest fonts are shown with a percentage, and your text is written in each of them.

Above 85%, it is almost always the right font, or a very close cousin. Between 70 and 85%, the general shape is right but a detail differs: a variant, another weight. Below that, the original font is probably not on your computer: look for it on the Web, or recreate it in the workshop.

It compares the fonts installed in Windows. To add a folder of fonts that are not installed, open the font workshop and click, on the right, “Add a font folder” (under “Your fonts”).

Straighten it first: “Image” tab, “Straighten automatically” button. If the result doesn’t suit you, take the “Straighten a skewed photo” tool (P key), drag the four handles onto the corners of the sign and press Enter. Crop to the text with the “Crop” tool (C key), then go back to the “Text” tab and click “Detect again”.

Show the text as large as possible, then click “Capture an area of the screen” under the dotted frame of the home screen (or Tools › Capture an area of the screen…, Ctrl+Shift+E). Draw a frame around the text and click “Read this area”: it is handled like an ordinary image.

Click “Search the web” under that line: the text is compared with the free, open-licence fonts published on the Internet. Click “Save” next to the one you like: it is stored in your font folder with a note of its licence, and all that is left is to activate it. If nothing looks right, the font is probably a commercial one: “Identify online” opens a specialist website that also knows commercial fonts, and “Create in the workshop” recreates it from the letters of the image.

The image is too small, too blurred or taken from too far away. Crop to the text, straighten the photo, or use a larger image.

No. When you click “Activate in Windows”, the file stays where it is, in your folder: Windows only knows where to find it. You can keep thousands of fonts without cluttering the computer, and activate only those you need for a piece of work. “Remove from Windows” takes it out without ever deleting the file.

Yes. The list shows 400 fonts at a time: beyond that, use the search. The sheet shows 300 at a time, drawn as they come into view, and the “Show 300 more fonts” button shows the next ones. It stays fast, even with thousands of fonts.

With the drop-down list at the top left of the library: “Duplicates” shows the same font present several times, “Unreadable or broken” the damaged files, “Without French accents” those lacking é, è, à, ç… Keep one copy of each duplicate, and download the broken files again from their original site.

To group fonts that are used together: a wedding, a flying club, a series of models. Click a font, then “Collection…” › “New collection…”. When you choose the collection in the “All collections” list, a band lets you activate it in Windows in one go, remove it, or print its PDF sheet. The fonts stay in your folder: deleting a collection never deletes the fonts.

Click the font, type your text in the trial box, then click “Text to curves (SVG)”. The file holds the drawing of the letters, not the font: it opens in Illustrator, Inkscape or the software of a cutting machine, on any computer.

A few are enough. The missing boxes are filled by “Rebuild”: capitals, lower case, digits, accented letters and signs, drawn from the nearest font on your computer, then adapted to your letters (same stroke width, same width, same spacing). The more letters you give, the more the font keeps its character.

A sharp image where the letters are at least 60 pixels high and well apart from each other. A photo taken straight on gives better letters than one taken at an angle. You can add several images: the letters add up, and a letter read better replaces the previous one.

Click it in the table. The “Weight”, “Width”, “Height”, “Vertical position” and “Spacing” sliders adjust it, and the trial line shows the result in a word at once. “Retouch” opens a brush to add or erase a piece; “Draw” lets you redo it entirely with the mouse or a tablet. A misread letter is deleted with the bin, then “Rebuild” draws it again.

OpenType (.otf) for drawing and layout software, TrueType (.ttf) for most embroidery and cutting software, or both. If you tick “Also save the version for websites (WOFF2)”, you also get a .woff2 file, to give to the person who makes your website.

Yes: it is a real font, usable in Word, Illustrator, embroidery and cutting software like any other. For those programs, TrueType (.ttf) is usually the better choice. For machines that write with a pen, the workshop also makes single-stroke fonts, in which every letter is drawn with a single stroke.

The fonts you make belong to you. For a downloaded font, respect its licence: the free fonts offered by the software are open-licence, including for commercial use.

In the workshop, click “Your handwriting (grid)…”, then “Print the grid to fill in (PDF)…”. Print the three pages at actual size, write one letter per box with a black felt-tip pen, then scan or photograph the pages. Go back to “Your handwriting (grid)…” › “Read a filled-in grid (scan or photo)…” and choose the three pictures in one go, or a three-page PDF. The characters you didn’t write are completed from the nearest font.

No. It knows which letter goes in which box: even handwriting that is hard to read gives a font. The small grey character in the corner of each box tells you what to write.

Print without “Fit to page”. Write with a medium black felt-tip pen (a ballpoint is too thin), one letter per box. Stand each letter on the bottom line; capitals touch the dotted line at the top, and g, p or y go down below the line, as in a school exercise book. Don’t touch the four black squares in the corners. A box left empty is simply ignored.

The photo must show the whole sheet, with its four black squares. Photograph it lying flat, straight on, without strong shadows and in good light, or scan the page.

Essential is enough to organise your fonts, activate them, compare them and find the one in an image. Complete, the one we recommend, adds the workshop that makes your fonts: from an image, your drawings or your handwriting, as OTF, TTF and WOFF2. Studio is Complete on three computers. Help › Compare the editions… shows all three side by side.

Yes, at any time, by paying only the difference. The new key is entered in Help › Licence… and replaces the old one, with nothing to reinstall.

After buying on ffsmc.fr, you receive an e-mail straight away with your key, in the form XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX. In the software: Help › Licence…, paste the key into the “Licence key” box (Ctrl+V), then click “Activate”. The badge at the top right then shows your edition.

On the old one: Help › Licence… › “Deactivate this computer”. Then activate the key on the new one.

Download the installer from this page and double-click the file FFSMC-Crea-Pol-Lab-Setup in your “Downloads” folder. Windows asks whether you allow the program to make changes: the publisher shown is “Christophe Queyroi”, that is, FFSMC, so click “Yes”. Choose your language and follow the screens. The software is digitally signed.

Yes. From the Store, just click “Install”, and the Store then takes care of the updates, with nothing for you to do.

Once a day, Crea Pol Lab checks whether a new version exists. If so, it offers “Install now”, “Later” or “Skip this version”. The new version is installed over the old one, and your fonts and settings are kept. To turn this check off or back on: Help › Tell me about new versions. To check yourself: Help › Check for updates.

Write to [email protected]. Describe what you were doing and, if possible, attach a screenshot (Print Screen key, then Ctrl+V in your e-mail). We answer quickly, in English or in French.

Close Word completely (all its windows), then open it again. Programs only read the list of fonts when they start.

Your font folder has probably been moved or renamed: Windows can no longer find them. Open the library on the new folder and activate them again.

A font with the same name may be open in a program. Close Word, Illustrator and the others, or give your font another name.

Some video players protect their picture. Pause the video, press the Print Screen key on your keyboard, then paste the picture into Crea Pol Lab with Ctrl+V.