Outlining Fonts: Is It Necessary?
February 21st, 2007A 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 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.