Fiona O’Leary is a student at the Royal College of Art and the creator of a prototype called Spector. The Spector is a tool that can capture any font and color you see in the world. If you like the London subway maps font, for instance, you just have to put the Spector on the map, it will make a photo to capture that font and load it into Adobe InDesign. It uses an algorithm to translate that image into information about the shape of letters and symbols. It then cross-references that information with a font database to correctly identify it. It also captures colors and breaks them down into CMYK/RGB values.The prototype recognizes seven different font families and can identify type size, kerning, and leading.
The Spector isn’t yet available for sale (but we all hope it will)
https://vimeo.com/171945692
All Rights Reserved to Fiona O’Leary
(via wired)