Font advice

[feanaaro]

Hello,

I am looking for a font to use in fantasy maps, which is easy to read even at small sizes. It seems to be kinda difficult, since most small-size-oriented fonts seems to be modern-looking, often sans serifs, which obviously would not work well with the ancient fantasy feeling.
I know there are threads on fonts in the forum, but I haven't been able to find something adequate there. If anyone had any good advice I would be very grateful.

[generalhead]

You should be able to go here to find what you are looking for dafont
There are thousands of great fonts at this site
If you don't know how to install new fonts just Youtube how to install new fonts and it should walk you through it.

[Azélor]

if font size is a problem you could consider using vector. Just an idea.

I have a lot of font and a lot are readable at small size. How small do you want them, to be 8, 12 ... ?

As a quick suggestion look at Duvall : Duvall | dafont.com
I might have others but it's the most obvious.

[feanaaro]

Thanks Azelor. Duvall looks nice, I'll try it though I am not sure it fits with the style I'm looking for.
What do you mean by vector? Aren't fonts already vectorial?
As an example, this is what I have now (Roman Antiqua), it works acceptably at small sizes (even though not as small as I would like), but it has a problem at the opposite end, in that the big letters appear "chipped", which I don't like.

Fontprova.jpg

This is just a small portion of the map, the whole would be much bigger, and therefore the fonts should be well readable at least at 50% of the present size.

[Azélor]

yes font are vector in their original files but when you put them in photoshop or any raster program they get pixelized. That is why the font size is important. Otherwise it could be size 1 with no problem.

[- Max -]

Feanarro, can you give some input about your size map/resolution and font size you're currently using?

[feanaaro]

I see what you mean now. The city names are 30pt (36 for the big one) in the original .psd file, though they appear much smaller to me even at 100% size, not sure why.
- Max - The whole map is 6500*4000 pixels.

[Azélor]

I see what you mean now. The city names are 30pt (36 for the big one) in the original .psd file, though they appear much smaller to me even at 100% size, not sure why.
- Max - The whole map is 6500*4000 pixels.

That's the image size but the resolution is usually in point per inch. If your image is 72 ppi or 300 ppi, the font will not be the same size. Take a nice fantasy like Harrington at 30 pt in a file of 300 ppi. Now change it to 72 ppi and it's all pixelizated. So more resolution mean you can put more details. But at 30 with 300 ppi you should not have problem finding a nice font . It's rare, but some font are hard to read even at 72 pt.

[feanaaro]

I am not planning to print the map, so the ppi should not be that relevant, should they? Besides, I just tried switching the resolution in the photoshop file, but nothing seemed to change in the fonts. Or is there something I am completely missing?

Edit: sorry, apparently I am stupid today. Changing the pip to 300 does indeed change the font size, though not their appearance (at least within photoshop). At 72 ppi the fonts are the size I said before (30-36 for city names), at 300 ppi they are more like 7.2-8.64, which is a lot smaller indeed.