Important FontLab Studio 5 for Windows works on Windows XP, 7, 8, 10 and newer.
FontLab Studio 5 for macOS is a native Mac app on Mac OS X 10.6.8–macOS 10.14 and a special build for macOS 10.15 and newer (including macOS 12 Monterey), which offers Windows-like user experience on the Mac.
We recommend that you upgrade to FontLab 7, our modern successor to FontLab Studio 5.
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You need a FS5W serial number to run the app on macOS Catalina or newer.
If you only have a FS5M serial number, contact us.
FontLab Studio 5 is our classic font editor for macOS and Windows. It has been used by Adobe, Apple, IBM, Microsoft, Monotype, Morisawa and almost every other major font foundry in the world. It is the comprehensive solution for font foundries, professional type designers, typographers and graphic design studios, allowing them to design typefaces and create or modify fonts.
FontLab Studio 5 offers a complete integrated workflow for font creation, from font family management, through multilingual glyph design and spacing and kerning, all the way to automatic and manual hinting and Python scripting.
Important FontLab Studio 5 now works on macOS 11 Big Sur and macOS 12 Monterey, but we recommend FontLab 7, which is the modern successor to FontLab Studio 5.
Many designers say that FontLab Studio 5 is their favorite Bézier drawing tool ever. A powerful combination of the Pen, Rectangle, Ellipse, Knife and Eraser tools allows you to create precise Bézier curves. With numeric and freeform Transformations, both manual and font-wide, you can quickly adjust your glyphs to match your design.
Watch tutorial video on Bézier drawing.Copy-paste vectors from Adobe Illustrator or import EPS outline artwork. Import monochrome images and use them as reference, or automatically Trace them into Bézier contours, specifically optimized for type design. Clean up, Optimize, correct and simplify your contours with a variety of smart algorithms for perfect quality.
Easily spot odd points and suspicious curves with FontAudit, our live outline custodian that will visually show you errors and possible issues in your glyphs, and sometimes even automatically fix them. Use FontAudit to find those lines that are just off of vertical, missing extrema points, and tangent curves that aren’t quite smooth.
Watch tutorial video on better curves.FontLab Studio 5 dynamically displays the glyphs relevant to the one you’re working on, with Shape groups, a semi-transparent glyph cloud stacked behind the current outline, and Neighbors, glyphs left and right of your glyph. This way, you can quickly switch between related lettershapes and design them in a coordinated fashion.
In FontLab 8, you can draw and edit many glyphs at once with our next-generation drawing tools: a live calligraphic Power Brush, an easy Rapid drawing tool, a live pathfinding Fill tool. Edit your outlines faster with Power Nudge, slide node, G2 Genius nodes, revolutionary Tunni lines, live rounded corners.
The powerful Metrics Window is a multiline text editor that allows you to comfortably test, space and kern your font. Set the left and right sidebearing and the advance width in the Metrics mode, and kern in the Kerning mode. The table on the right and the panel on the bottom give you detailed numeric control over your metrics and kerning.
Watch tutorial video on spacing.Automatically or manually groups your glyphs by similar shape to create Classes. Quickly copy sidebearings or widths from one glyph to all related glyphs with Class-based Metrics Assistance. With class-based Kerning, kern a glyph against a class of glyphs, or entire classes against each other. Less work, more efficient fonts, and more fun!
FontLab 8 lets you space, kern, draw and edit glyphs in its unified windows. Build complex spacing relationships with metrics links, view kerning classes as you kern, apply OT features to space & kern alternates. Dock windows into tabs or float them across monitors, all in gorgeous Retina / High DPI quality.
FontLab Studio 5 supports Multiple master font design. With up to 3 design axes and 16 masters, you can create extensive font families that vary in weight, width or other aspects. The advanced Blend algorithm helps you turn standalone fonts into interpolable font families. With FontLab’s point-compatible PostScript-to-TrueType curve conversion, you can easily prepare your family for conversion into OpenType Variable fonts in FontLab VI. Extrapolation helps you create a black or a light style from a regular and a bold.
Watch tutorial video on Multiple Master.FontLab Studio 5 supports encoding of any Unicode character. The app has detailed data for all of Unicode 6, and allows you to add glyphs for all Unicode 10 codepoints (including those beyond the Basic Multilingual Plane). It also supports Unicode Private Use Area codepoints, unencoded glyphs, and OpenType glyph variants.
With Components, you can create your base letters and diacritic accents once and assemble accented characters by attaching the components. FontLab Studio 5 maintains a live link: one change in the design is reflected in all the composite characters. The app can smartly auto-generate over 2,500 accented characters from your components.
Watch tutorial video on Latin diacritic design.Add advanced typographic OpenType Layout features such as small caps or ligatures with the industry-standard Adobe FEA syntax. The OpenType Preview allows you to see the effect of features, including how they interact.
Watch tutorial video on OpenType features
FontLab 8 supports MM and variable fonts with unlimited axes and intermediate masters, and supports all OpenType color font formats. With auto layers, composite characters update their positioning as you adjust the anchors. Preview OpenType Layout features right in the editing window.
Have FontLab Studio automatically set vertical alignment zones and glyph-level hints for optimized screen legibility in small sizes. Or take complete manual control. Use FontLab’s automatic hinting at any stage, and choose when and where to tweak by hand. The built-in system and FreeType rasterizer preview shows you exactly what your final font will look like on screen.
With FontLab Studio 5’s integrated visual TrueType Hinting workflow, you can get pixel-perfect screen rendering in all Microsoft Windows apps. Set your PostScript hints and alignment zones, and have FontLab automatically generate TrueType Hinting commands, that will guarantee uniform text rendering. You can also manually hand-hint some or all your glyphs for absolute control over every pixel at every screen font size!
Watch tutorial video on TrueType Hinting.
FontLab Studio 5 has massive support for Python, the standard programming language for font work. Almost anything you can do in FontLab Studio is accessible to Python programming. Not a programmer? That’s okay! There are dozens of free third-party Python scripts for FontLab available from many sources. There are even third-party macro plug-ins with a full user interface, such as the Font Remix Tools.
Video on FontLab Python scripting.FontLab 8 lets you open fonts in .glyphs and UFO formats. Export single fonts and entire families into monochrome, color and variable OpenType, webfonts and UFO. Autohint fonts using two different engines, transfer manual TT Hinting commands, and preview true Microsoft Windows font rendering on macOS!
