Outlining Fonts: Is It Necessary?
A person on the Adobe InDesign User to User Forum posed this question today: “I usually outline the fonts when I’m making PDFs to send to clients as proofs or to send to the printer. Is it even necessary to outline the fonts? I was always under the impression that if you don’t and the person receiving the PDF doesn’t have the particular font on their computer, it will default to a different font in the PDF.”
This is one of those urban myths of publishing—that you frequently need to outline fonts. The truth is that you should almost never have to outline fonts. Really only if you want to mess around with the glyph shapes for a special artistic effect. Unfortunately, it’s perpetuated by some print service providers and others who insist that they won’t receive a PDF file unless the fonts have been outlined.
The truth is that InDesign always embeds fonts in the PDF if the font vendor’s End User License Agreement (hereinafter referred to as the EULA) says you can. Sometimes users think they can get around restrictions on sharing fonts with others by converting text to outlines. According to Claudia McCue’s excellent Real World Print Production (Peachpit Press), “Surprisingly…converting text to outlines does not sidestep the provisions of the font vendor’s EULA. In fact, while some some font vendors’ licensing allows conversion of text to outlines, many expressly forbid it.”
Here are some other good reasons not to outline fonts:
- The outlining of text will degrade the typographic quality of the text. Why is this? The glyphs are turned into normal graphics which lack the intelligence that fonts have in displaying or printing text, particularly on lower resolution devices. Fonts have hinting built in, which makes them look good at low resolution. This is lost when you outline type.
- Certain attributes will be lost when outlining because they are not part of the font itself, but are applied by InDesign. Try adding these features to your InDesign type—underlining, strikethrough, bullets applied with the Bullets & Numbering feature, or footnotes. Then select the text and choose Type > Create Outlines. Guess what: Those attributes just disappear!
Almost always, the best answer is to (1) use fonts which allow embedding, and (2) let InDesign embed the fonts (which it does by default) when you create a PDF file. The resulting PDF file can be viewed in Acrobat or free Adobe Reader on either Mac or Windows, or printed to almost any printer with the fonts intact.
So the next time, a printer says that you need to outline your fonts, just say NO! And start looking for another printer who will take your PDF with properly embedded fonts.
I agree that people should avoid outlining fonts whenever possible, Steve. But there are times when people find they need to do it. In those cases, don’t use the Convert to Outline feature; instead, make a custom transparency flattener preset. We talked about how to do this in Podcast Episode 35.
I think there will always be exceptions. I recall Diane Burns saying at one of the InDesign Conferences that her firm was frequently called upon to outline Asian fonts because of their unique issues.
But I’m talking about the vast majority of cases where outlining is NOT a good idea.
Also, keep in mind outlining fonts increase the file size and processing time. The PDF will take longer to open and render the content slower…especially when the body text is outlined.
An outline font in a PDF just reads terrible on screen. And is it me or does it print a little ‘fatter’?
* It will print fatter if the resolution of the RIP/plates is less than 2400 ppi.
* Text will look fatter out from a DIGITAL press because these devices have a lower resolution
* Always warn your service bureau if the PDF has outlined fonts, so it increases the RIP’s resolution.
* – 500 pages document, text only document : PDF is 2.2 Mb
- 500 pages, all texts outlined : PDF is 245 Mb but went flawless through the RIP
* Outline only if a font is corrupted, causes problem, or has an uncommon encoding
> Certain attributes will be lost when outlining because they are not part of the font itself, but are applied by InDesign. Try adding these features to your InDesign type—underlining, strikethrough, bullets applied with the Bullets & Numbering feature, or footnotes. Then select the text and choose Type > Create Outlines. Guess what: Those attributes just disappear!
THIS IS NOT CORRECT. If you create a transparency flattener with font outlining, these attributes ARE PRESERVED in the PDF or in the printed material.
Thanks for the useful thoughts, Branislav! I had forgotten that outlining during flattening would occur preserve the text attributes. I think it’s because that flattening is part of the PRINTING process. The Flattener is probably analyzing the print stream looking for text objects to turn into vectors. Obviously the flattening method of outlining has advantages for preserving those attributes, but I think you can only control outlining by a “per page”basis.
No, per spread, by customizing the flattening settings via the flyout menu of the Pages palette and disabling overriding of these settings in the advanced options of PRINT/EXPORT dialog boxes.
A reminder, to create transparent spreads, just add a little object in the corner of the Master(s) Page(s) and set its opacity to 0%.
The Flattening Engine works only on transparent spreads.
Should we have an “Outline font” in the exporting/printing options instead of creating transparency ? YES !
I can’t remember if I had posted this before, but here’s some information on the technical reasons why fonts get “fatter” when outlined.
Thanks for posting that, Mordy. I was looking for Thomas’ comments when I was writing that blog, but couldn’t find them!
I just wanted to add a couple little tips to this post.
Most people know that Cmd-Shift-O will outline the text. But some don’t know that adding Alt to the keys (Cmd-Alt-Shift-O) will make the outlined text as a copy on top of the live text.
Also, a lot of people think you need to convert text to outlines to insert pictures in them, but I believe it was InDesign Mag that had a great article on how to do this with Blending Modes and keep the text live.
I always had problems sending pdfs to mac users when the pdf was created on a PC. The printer tells me its an encoding issue with the fonts(macs mess up non unicode fonts or something like that) so there you have it. I guess I’ll have to outline everything I do until Gates and Jobbs agree to agree on a solution. (BTW I am not talking about standard latin characters)
I occasionally have to add an old True Type font to a layout, usually (as per a recent project) a small amount such as you might find in a logo or short by-line, when the client specifically wants it.
When preflighting, often ID will come up with the message that the font is ‘incomplete’. That is the only time I will convert text to outline. I have discovered that my old set of purchased TT fonts (10 yrs or so) will often cause this. I don’t use them much now but occasionally get clients ask for them.
In regard to font permissions; I have been unable to find a method that will give permission information for a font. Does anyone know of a technique or software which will to that?
Gerry,
As I recall, InDesign’s Preflight will identify fonts which can’t be embedded (though I don’t keep any of those to test). Of course, you have to use the font on the page to check this!
You’d probably have to get a font editor from http://www.fontlab.com to check permission bits in a font.
I just had a magazine printed and a particular pdf file(created in Illustrator) within the magazine was printed incorrectly. The project was created in Indesign and exported as a pdf, and the font on this particular file was printed in a default font rather than the font chosen. I don’t understand how this happened if fonts are imbedded in pdfs and indesign files.
I finally wrote up the flattening trick (for converting text to outlines on the fly) and posted it here.
I usually get requests to outline fonts from box printers, places that do 1-off mock-ups, or printers who have a less expensive setup. They can get by without costly prepress software like the stuff Creo makes by putting all the files they get through vector editing software like Illustrator.
If you open a pdf in Illustrator, even if the font is embedded in the pdf, any fonts the computer is missing won’t work.
Illustrator can be quirky so if I get a request for outlined pdfs, I always open the pdf in Illustrator and hit ctrl+y to check my outlines and make sure that all the clipping paths show up.
by the way, to anyone curious as to why “embedded” isn’t all that embedded in reality – I heard it was because when Adobe was first trying to push having designers make pdfs to give to printers, you could steal embedded fonts out of the pdfs very easily.
So the trouble comes from an imaginary property complaint from font foundries. If those guys could find better ways of generating revenue and have fonts be free, everything would be much more convenient. Imagine being able to use more than 9 fonts on the web. (without SIfr)
I have been using the transparency flattner preset trick successfully on a a project that uses proprietary asian fonts. These fonts won’t embed or allow themselves to be collected in InDesign or FlightCheck so the need to convert was unavoidable. When we tried to manually convert we got a mess across a large document of over 50 pages.
This solution works so seemlessly we are going to employ it in all of our offset litho PDFs. I can’t tell you how many large print firms request outlined PDFs and EPS files from us. And I do mean large, a big conglomo one in fact.
I balked at the thought but now that I have a way that is integrated in the PDF workflow, I’m down for it.
Here’s a good read on PDFs…
http://americanprinter.com/mag/printing_best_pdfs/
we have to outline fonts because customers send us pdfs, much more than ai or eps files. we dont print those files we use them to create different banners and stuff. thats the point.
they dont know much about vectors. theres no way to avoid outlining except having the fonts, that we often dont have.
it’s a bad thing that adobe doesn’t have a feature in their software to outline fonts when importing or opening pdfs.
I am a prepress operator for an offset printing company and i have never asked my customers to outline their fonts. I do insist that (depending on the complexity of the artwork) they either make a PDF to our specifications; or package the file using the software’s package or collect for output features (and read the warnings if any appear during the process!).
Without mentioning what other posters have mentioned (e.g. fattening, file size increase), outlining fonts makes it difficult to edit the type for last minute alts. The amount of times customers have supplied PDFs for final art, and once the proofs are back we receive alts – but no updated PDF files – is quite frustrating. Using either enfocus pitstop or illustrator we may be able to make changes, but if the fonts are outlined, it makes it much, much harder.
However, when I was a prepress operator at a service bureau many many moons ago, I did see some issues arising with fonts, such as:
* fonts not embedding into a PDF, normally a licensing issue with the font, and normally with fonts i’d never heard of and imagined were downloaded from somewhere deep and dark on the internet;
* fonts which were used purely for a corporate identity (i.e. rather than give their customer a tiff or eps version of the logo, the designer has given the customer the logo as a font so that to place the logo, they select the font and type a letter to get the logo);
* truetype fonts behaving strangely, normally the fault of the RIP and no longer a problem with more stable RIPs nowadays;
* a certain illustrating program which will remain nameless (hint: it’s NOT illustrator) would open a file and even though the fonts were loaded in the font manager, all the fonts in the artwork still came up as courier or times rather than the intended font (but no font substitution warning would appear!).
Printer wants me to outline fonts, apparently because nine letters of a TrueType Baskerville Bold show up in the PDF as two fonts: regular bold and bold SC750. I can’t find “SC750″ in anything font-related, either on the desktop or in the InDesign CS4 file, but it’s in the PDF and the printer says it’s a problem.
I’d use a Type 1 version, but I don’t have it in semibold, and the TT semibold (with about 15 characters) shows up as just one font, apparently without a problem.
Any idea what the problem is? TIA.
When it comes to wide format digital printing, it depends on the capibilities of the RIP in use. When printing directly from a PDF file, things can randomly drop off the artwork altogether, so its best to print using an EPS or TIFF.. unfortunately if you open a PDF in Illustrator that has live text and you are missing the fonts then it can make things difficult..
excellent post written by Dov Isaacs on this topic @ http://forums.adobe.com/thread/853138?tstart=0
Hi,
Can you tell me what impact it has on the PRESS?
Since we sometimes got problems with our DI- PRESS recognizing the font.
For example: i put a character like this: ”;” in a font u dont see much. The DI-PRESS cant ‘’see” it and it will give a ‘’square” character instead of the correct one. Now when i change the text to outlines the press doesnt have any problems anymore. But since i got text with -Strikethrough i cant do that specific sentense in outlines since it will remove the ”Strikethrough”.
Any ideas?
Thanks in advance
Weak article.
In an ideal, magical world where everything works like it’s supposed to, you should never have to outline anything. In the real world, all sorts of font problems occur all the time. As a designer and prepressman I’ve seen countless examples. Problems when printing, different problems when platemaking, problems even just viewing embedded fonts on screen in Acrobat. ALWAYS get a flattened or printed proof on any costly job.
[...] a piece on why you shouldn’t convert text to outlines. I generally agree with Steve’s last comment, where he says if your printer wants you to [...]
Wrong wrong and wrong.
You are assuming all printshops are printing offset or paper printing in general.
As a textile printer for 20 plus years, our process is quite different. We need to get color separations out of the artwork, each screen using a different sep. In order to do this, we need files that can be separated out, not printed as is out of a pdf (especially given that they are often not sent in spot color).
When we get files which have embedded fonts in the pdf, the fonts do in fact convert to another font style when brought into any other program if we do not happen to have the same font. Thus, any textile printer would in fact need all fonts converted to outline to retain the look.
Sometimes people use free fonts that I can download and then bring in the file, but often if they are commercial fonts I am not going to buy new fonts for every poorly made pdf that comes in.
In my industry, outline fonts is definitely necessary… that is no myth.
@MDV and @Artisticallyderanged: You’re putting your blame in the wrong place. If the embedded fonts are changing when you separate them, then it is whatever old, cruddy, buggy software you’re using to convert them that is the problem, not the PDF.
You have bought into your own myth, that converting fonts to outlines is necessary. That myth was started by third-party software developers who are apparently too lazy to update their software to 21st century standards.
Whether you’re talking flexo or offset or screen printing or whatever… forcing people to convert text to outlines is the fault of your outdated software, not InDesign, the fonts, or anything else.
I use the latest version, CS5 Illustrator and embedded fonts to do not hold if you don’t have the exact same font family loaded. It may be true that InDesign is embedding the fonts for most cases a PDF is used in but when opened in Illustrator, the fonts have issues if not converted to outlines. And to print a huge run on a large format digital printer from a PDF is suicide. Just curious, those who call this a “myth” have you had to deal with InDesign PDFs in Illustrator and RIP software on an ongoing basis? Or is your argument based on your favoritism of solely using InDesign?
@Brooke: You’re saying you’re opening PDFs in Illustrator? Well, yes, in that case, the fonts are going to change. But other stuff might change, too! A lot of people seem to think that you can just open PDFs in Illustrator without messing them up. Not true. The only reason to open a PDF in AI is to make additional edits; it should never be used as a step in printing someone’s work. If you’re trying to print someone’s PDF, you should print it from Acrobat.
I don’t agree, I work in pre press and most designers these days don’t have a clue. The amount of times I receive a file without the font’s or most times they don’t even send me the links when they are not embedded. If the font’s are not outlined the odd word drops out of a text box because the leading always seems to alter, I have seen this so many times. It’s always pure luck if I spot this or not and of course if I don’t spot it it’s my fault. I am fed up of baby sitting designer’s I always send them a artwork spec sheet but they never follow it. I always have to get them to re-send the files. It’s a sad fact that a lot of the old skills are being lost and most people these days don’t even seem to know what CMYK is.
@David Blatner I had to read your comment to realize that Illustrator CS5 is “old, cruddy, buggy software”. Thanks for the laugh.
So I’m a bit new at this… I got everything to flatten and exported grand using this method. Problem is that I have hyperlinks that I want to preserve for an online document version of what I am printing. It says that Acrobat 4 doesn’t support hyperlinks when flattening. How do I work around that? Or am I back to converting bullets to text and converting to outlines? I really like the flattening approach and see the benefits. Can anyone help?
Wow! This is blowing a galaxy-sized dark-matter-filled hole in my “best practices” brain! I have been converting text to outlines now for 6 years. I have always noticed the slight loss of “hinting”, sadly. Curiously enough i only do it on small business cards and one page designs. When sending a 100 page book to press i never did it, but never asked why.
You say this above:
“The truth is that InDesign always embeds fonts in the PDF if the font vendor’s End User License Agreement (hereinafter referred to as the EULA) says you can.”
How am i supposed to know if my font vendor’’s EULA says this or not?
Francesco, InDesign honors the Embedding Rights settings that are set in the font file itself.
I think it would be illogical for a font file to allow embedding, and a separate EULA saying it’s not allowed.
I have always outlined fonts. Never ever had any problems with doing so. No such degradation in quality as mentioned, hinting, etc.