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C
cblads@cox.net
Participant
October 23, 2018
Answered

Help! Kerning/tracking is way off in PDF export

  • October 23, 2018
  • 2 replies
  • 2119 views

I did an employee benefits guide last fall and now it's time to update it for 2019.

Per client style guidelines, the guide uses the OTF font family Titillium throughout which I found at Font Squirrel. While I did last year's guide, I created a number of paragraph styles for headers, text, tables, disclaimers, hypertext links, etc.  All was good.

To do the update, I inserted some pages and laid out a new section for 401(k). I used all the existing paragraph styles to style the text. Everything looked good in InDesign. Now I go to export it to a High Quality Print PDF for client review, and when I do, the font is wacky. Kerning is off, tracking is off, bold/italic type is shifted to the left and is now covering other normal text. Another weird thing is that everything I created last year looks fine when exported. Only the new pages and new text is doing this. Also, every time I generate a PDF get a pop-up in Acrobat Pro DC that simply says, "A number is out of range."

I'm a full Adobe Creative Cloud customer and diligently to my updates as soon as they are released. I know there have been a few updates since last year. I'm current with all of them.

Does this have something to do with these updates?

I'm on a deadline and need a solution.

Please help!

Here's a screen capture of what the new pages of text is doing:

Screen shot from a section of the same guide created last year:

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer cblads@cox.net

Nope, just my local iMac.


To Chad--- Tried that, didn't work. Starting with Basic paragraphs and creating new styles didn't work.

I'm going to do the Tahoma for Titillium regular font substitution, which seems to be working for now, then dig into this when I have time in December...

Thanks all. Was looking for someone who had the same issue and had resolved it.

--Tim

2 replies

hammer0909
Community Expert
hammer0909Community Expert
Community Expert
October 23, 2018

It appears that this is MOSTLY happening where you have a character style applied? Could you do a test and delete the character style replacing with None and re-export? What are your results? Possibly create a new character style from scratch and re-try.

C
cblads@cox.netAuthor
Participant
October 23, 2018

Also, I work on a an iMac 2013 running El Capitan, but also tried exporting the file on an iMac 2018 running High Sierra. No difference in the PDF results.

BobLevine
Community Expert
BobLevineCommunity Expert
Community Expert
October 23, 2018

What version of InDesign? CC2019 won't even install on El Capitan.

Sounds like a font issue of some sort but without seeing the files, it's impossible to tell.

C
cblads@cox.netAuthor
Participant
October 23, 2018

v13.1

I think it's a font issue as well, but that doesn't explain the kerning and tracking working just fine on the pages created last year and the fact that they currently export just fine as well. Why would the font have problems on new pages but not old ones - even updated old ones?

It's a soul-sucking quandary on a tight deadline project.

If I swap out the regular font with Tahoma (the client's acceptable secondary font), leaving the the italicized Titillium in place both regular and bold it kerns/tracks just fine.

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