My inked drawings on mylar or paper (3-6 inch cap height) are scanned at 300 ppi. I bring the scans into Adobe Illustrator CC and use “Image Trace—Make & Expand” to convert my scanned artwork to vectors. Then, I copy and paste these vector outlines into FontLab to further refine and generate a font.
Recently, I went back and tried using Adobe Streamline 4.0 to generate the same vectors and compared them directly over my Illustrator outline generated vectors. I was surprised to see that Adobe Streamline was better at reproducing more accurately the overall curves and shapes. Less refinement and editing was needed in FontLab. I tried tweaking the advanced setting in Illustrators Image Trace and the results are still noticeably better using the older Adobe Streamline 4.0
I know that FontLab sells ScanFont app, which I have not purchased yet. I’m not sure if this would help. Has anyone done extensive testing with all the other various “scan to vector” programs? Which offer the best results? What practice or techniques do you use in this overall process? Thank you.