My Text in Your Handwriting

Tom S. F. Haines, Oisin Mac Aodha, Gabriel J. Brostow

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract / Description of output

There are many scenarios where we wish to imitate a specific author’s pen-on-paper handwriting style. Rendering new text in someone’s handwriting is difficult because natural handwriting is highly variable, yet follows both intentional and involuntary structure that makes a person’s style self-consistent. The variability means that naive example-based texture synthesis can be conspicuously repetitive.
We propose an algorithm that renders a desired input string in an author’s handwriting. An annotated sample of the author’s handwriting is required; the system is flexible enough that historical documents can usually be used with only a little extra effort. Experiments show that our glyph-centric approach, with learned parameters for spacing, line thickness, and pressure, produces novel images of handwriting that look hand-made tocasual observers, even when printed on paper.
Original languageEnglish
Article number26
Pages (from-to)26:1-26:18
Number of pages18
JournalACM Transactions on Graphics
Volume35
Issue number3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 31 May 2016

Keywords / Materials (for Non-textual outputs)

  • Texture synthesis
  • generative models
  • handwriting

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