do you have to outline fonts - PDF

Hi all,

I normally outline my fonts to avoid any hassles but I have created a design that has very thin type and when I outline it makes it too fat - bleh!

So I would like to know if it is ok just to save as a PDF WITHOUT outlining the fonts if you are sending a file off to magazine, newspaper, printer and that they will not have a problem with missing fonts etc.

Thanks!

do you have to outline fonts - PDF

Generally you do not want to outline fonts, especially in the native artwork. Save as PDF allows for embedding fonts, so the printer should not have font problems.

Some designers prefer to outline fonts anyway, for file integrity reasons. If your file falls into the wrong hands, it's a lot harder for someone to make use of outlined text. If you want to outline text in PDF output, just add a topmost layer. Cover it with a white box with darken blend mode. Lock the layer. Make a transparency flattener preset that outlines text. When you save as PDF, go to Acrobat 4 compatibility (try a standard such as PDF/X-1a) and use the flattener preset.

The fonts looking fat on-screen is a display issue. Printing is not affected.

do you have to outline fonts - PDF

Outlining does affect the printing, too

I vote no as well not necessary to outline fonts and not really desirable.

Jacob Bugge wrote:

Outlining does affect the printing, too

Wade_Zimmerman wrote:

I vote no as well not necessary to outline fonts and not really desirable.

I agree 100% with Printer Rick, The PDF file can increase in size but to avoid any possible issue is better to convert the fonts to outlines. His experience is visible in this subject.

I will follow his recommendations.

hans that is not what Printer Rick wrote he is suggesting if you have

to convert them then do so.

But there really should be no reason for it.

It is probably just a mind set from the past.

progress has been made in this area and it might be time for those

printers to get up to speed.

Outlining text, beyond text used for ''artistic'' headlines and text that is actually part of an illustration, is probably one of the most over-used (abused) features of vector drawing programs. Now that PDF is the most common way to deliver print-ready files, there is seldom need to run the old gamut of bundling up external files and fonts to send to a printer.

Just don't spend good money on fonts that disallow embedding in PDFs. (Believe it or not, there still are some--ITC Officina, for example.)

...I have created a design that has very thin type...

Hello Wade,

You are right in some degree. However, not every company keeps their hardware and software up to date. If you know your printer, manufacturer, etc. then I can see your recommendation can come in to play.

But Printer Rick's advised is anticipating from old hardware/software to the up to date. So it is better to follow his recommendations.

Sometimes special characters can disappeared or changed (Like: 茅, 锚, 毛, 莽, 帽, etc.) because the printer's software is old. Or sometimes you are using another language.

I am not saying you are wrong (because you are not), but to cover your behind is better to convert everything to outline.

Printer_Rick wrote:

But in a typical commercial offset environment, with a RIP and high resolution plate output, every font character is identical to the outlined vector shape, there is no difference whatsoever.

ScottWeichert wrote:

Live fonts do contain hinting which is sent to the RIP. Outlines don't contain any hinting. Hinting is exceptionally helpful at smaller type sizes. Outlines are really not the same as live type.

Save as PDF allows for embedding fonts, so the printer should not have font problems.

It will embed the fonts by default. You can double check the fonts in the PDF using Acrobat. File: Properties: Fonts. This shows you the font list.

Also the flattener setting you use will determine whether or not fonts interacting with transparency get converted to outlines on output. If you use a preset such as High Resolution, all font data is retained.

You may want to ask your printer if they prefer a flat PDF, or one with transparency. If transparency, consider using PDF/X-4.

Printer,

Your ''test'' of hinting in typeface fonts frankly smacks of a gross misunderstanding of what hinting is all about. Hinting is not a matter of ''smoothing''. It is not a matter of altering the bezier outlines of the glyphs. It is a matter of specifying font-specific and/or glyph-specific rasterization ''rules'' to be applied in areas and at sizes when the algorithmic rasterization generally applied to ordinary Bezier paths might be ambiguous and/or problematic in terms of legibility/uniformity.

And if it were as ''pointless'' as you seem to think, I doubt that the energy, tedium and science it entails would be economically sound.

I'll not feign expertise beyond what I know. But as I understand it, hinting effective says something like, 'when printed at this size, do not turn off this printer spot on this serif of this glyph in this font, even though its curve would occupy less than 50% of the printer spot,' or 'Even though the normal rasterization routine of this horizontal edge would call for the display of this horozontal row of printer spots, use the next lower row instead.' And so on.

And so far as I can tell from my admittedly amateurish pidling with font design, hinting is not just for the sake of on-screen display.

All these spruious arguments about 'potential printing disasters', due to use of fonts in print-ready documents (how long have we been doing this--about 25 years now?) to my mind comprise little more than a easiest-way-out, lowest-crude-denominator kind of excuse making. By parallel rationale one might just as 'justifiably' argue that nothing should be sent to the imaging device as vector artwork; After all, since everything is eventually going to be rasterized to the printer spots anyway, just go ahead and rasterize every whole page to a single bitmap. That would certainly avoid any and all 'potential disasters' stemming from the 'horrors' of limit check errors, inappropriate flattness settings, etc, etc. and thereby ensure more reliable output.

Speaking of disasters; I've seen a few in cases wherein medium-to-small text that was needlessly converted to paths became wrecked due to flattness settings being raised, ostensibly to address some other output problem--the output was useless either way.

I'll tell ya -- any printer outource that blunderbuss recommends that I convert all text to paths--well, there are other printers out there to recommend to my clients.

JET

I think I'm being misunderstood here.

I believe live fonts are the best alternative, and if I implied that hinting is pointless, I apologize.

Hinting definitely does smooth the appearance of text. That's why live text looks so much better on-screen than outlined text. It also looks better in a composite printout.

I prefer files with live text. But I'm not going to reject a file that does not have live fonts, and in my experience a conversion to outlines does not harm the press result.

Hinting may create variable shapes at different sizes. But in the end, everything is solid square pixels on the plate. If an extremely small outlined glyph does not rasterize properly (that is, the pixels do not represent the true shape of the text character), another RIP issue is causing the problem.

I've done a quick RIP test using Nuptial Script, see attached.

1 pt, 2 pt, 3 pt, 4 pt, and 5 pt. One live font and one outlined at each size.

There is a difference. At my standard plate output 2400 PPI, the difference at 5 pt is much less noticeable than at 1 pt.

The difference is much more pronounced when the plate resolution is cut in half to 1200 PPI.

So I stand corrected, even at a high resolution output the hinting does make a difference - the outlined font is slightly bolder in appearance.

I'll have to do more tests before I draw hasty conclusions, though. In this example I have a script font at extremely small sizes. One could argue that fonts at such small sizes are difficult to read anyway. The difference between outline and live font on plate also depends on the font itself. Finally, even though I can see the difference in the tiff in Photoshop, if the two were printed side by side, it's questionable if you could see a lot of difference without using a loop.

I will definitely state that outlining text for a low resolution output (say 600) is a very bad idea. As far as 2400 PPI, maybe you can get away with it.

At any rate, thanks for your insight Jet. I have a lot of customers who supply outlined fonts. I will make them aware of this issue.

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