but... I don't want to buy a font I have !

Designers are often faced with the task of identifying the font of text in a printed or a digital image. This can be a very time consuming and error prone task especially when the designer's computer contains a few hundreds or thousands of fonts.

There are several web sites that will identify a font in a digital image and they do a very good job. The best known font identification web site is probably WhatTheFont.
Font identification web sites find the font in your image and then offer you to buy it or download it (if it's free). That's great if you don't have the font and you're willing to spend a few bucks to use the font.
But what happens if you already have a large font collection? How do you know you don't have the identified font? What if you cannot afford to buy the font? Would a similar one from your collection be OK?

To identify fonts on your computer you need a desktop font identification program. The latest and most advanced version of 'Find my Font' identifies fonts installed or just located (not installed) on your computer. The matching speed is amazing. In just a few seconds it can go through several thousands of fonts and give you the identified font and all the close matches.
What's even more surprising in the new version (2.2), is that it allows the user to match fonts that have been emboldened (stroked) or italicized (oblique) by a graphics program. In this case 'Find my Font' specifically marks the matched font(s) as [*bold] or [*oblique] to inform the designer that there is no exact font that matches the image but rather a graphics program has to be used to deform the type.
Special tools allow the user to easily match script (connected) text and text on an arc (slanted).

'Find my Font' is available for both Mac OS X and Windows and can be purchased on the findmyfont.com site for $49.00. A Free (trial) edition of the font identification software is also available.