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C
CBSE136RZ
Participant
March 1, 2018
Answered

Typeface/font rendering badly at different magnification levels in PDFs

  • March 1, 2018
  • 2 replies
  • 2730 views

I'm not really sure how to explain this properly, or if there is some terminology that I'm missing.

The problem is this: our brand typeface is very rounded, and sometimes in PDFs the baseline appears wiggly, making it hard to read.

The typeface prints well and on some magnifications it looks okay, but on others the typeface is really distracting (especially in paragraphs of text).

I'm aware that the typeface has been designed with overshoot on some letters to make them optically appear the same size, but Acrobat seems to be exaggerating this to the detriment of the readability.

Examples below:

Zoomed in - the baseline is straight

Zoomed out - the baseline is very wiggly

I'm on a MacBook Pro, and this wiggly-ness is even more pronounced on a PC.

Is anything I can do, either in my export settings from InDesign or in general?

Some notes:

It seems to render better when exporting InDesign as an interactive PDF rather than a print PDF

When saving as a jpg/png from Illustrator, it renders better when Saving For Screens rather than using the Asset Export

(p.s. no, we can't change the typeface )

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer Laubender

Hi Claire,

it's an unfortunate situation. Since you have no control over the reading apps of your customers over screen resolution or zoom factors users are reading your PDFs you cannot do anything to better the situation. A different font could be a solution, but you already ruled that out. Corporate rules. I understand that very well…

As Ariel TᴀW already suggested:

Get in contact with the font makers and begin a discussion of that issue.

Regards,
Uwe

2 replies

TᴀW
TᴀW
Legend
March 6, 2018

Isn't this what's known as a font "hinting" problem? Perhaps you should get back to the font designer and ask him to improve the font hinting.

id-extras.com | InDesign tools & scripts for typesetters, form designers, and translators
C
CBSE136RZAuthor
Participant
March 6, 2018

Thanks for the suggestion, have done so!

L
Community Expert
LaubenderCommunity Expert
Community Expert
March 6, 2018

Hi CBSE136RZ ,

I don't think you can do much about it.

Perhaps two things:

1. You could experiment with different sizes of the text.
2. Don't know if that's the case, but do not scale the text horizontally or vertically to make it slimmer or wider as the font designer intended.


It's the PDF reader's job to give you a good representation of an embedded font in the PDF with a given zoom factor and screen resolution.

What is your reading app?

Acrobat Reader? Which version?

Regards,
Uwe

C
CBSE136RZAuthor
Participant
March 6, 2018

Hey Uwe,

Thanks for the speedy response!

I haven't scaled the text horizontally or vertically, so that won't be a contributing factor. Good suggestion though.

In terms of reading app, I'm on the latest version of Adobe Acrobat Pro DC. Many of our clients will be on the free Acrobat Reader (probably on older versions) so I'm keen for as much of a cross-version solution as possible (if at all possible).

Thanks

Claire

L
Community Expert
LaubenderCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
Community Expert
March 6, 2018

Hi Claire,

it's an unfortunate situation. Since you have no control over the reading apps of your customers over screen resolution or zoom factors users are reading your PDFs you cannot do anything to better the situation. A different font could be a solution, but you already ruled that out. Corporate rules. I understand that very well…

As Ariel TᴀW already suggested:

Get in contact with the font makers and begin a discussion of that issue.

Regards,
Uwe

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