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M
MGMerck
Participant
November 6, 2009
Answered

Font EULA Question Re: Selling Logos

  • November 6, 2009
  • 1 reply
  • 2292 views

I'm an illustrator and contributor to iStockphoto.

I would like to use fonts that I have licensed from Adobe with my purchase of CS4 and other fonts I have licensed on Adobe's web site in logo designs that I would like to upload and sell through iStockphoto.

The font software itself would not be sold. I would be converting any fonts I used in my logo designs to outlines in Adobe Illustrator before they were offered for sale.

Is this use of fonts licensed from Adobe permitted under Adobe's EULA?

I've searched the forums and found questions similar to this, where the answer seemed to indicate this is permitted, but I'm not sure if those answers addressed this particular situation.

Thanks for any information!

-- Mike

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer Dov Isaacs

    Yes, this use of fonts is permitted via the EULA for Adobe fonts licensed directly from Adobe. For other font foundries, you need to check each individually. Some absolutely prohibit this unless you pay a further sales-based royalty to them.

    Note that outlining does tend to degrade output quality especially at various combinations of low resolution / low magnification / low pointsize. Why not embed the font in the output EPS or PDF?

              - Dov

    1 reply

    Dov Isaacs
    Dov IsaacsCorrect answer
    Legend
    November 6, 2009

    Yes, this use of fonts is permitted via the EULA for Adobe fonts licensed directly from Adobe. For other font foundries, you need to check each individually. Some absolutely prohibit this unless you pay a further sales-based royalty to them.

    Note that outlining does tend to degrade output quality especially at various combinations of low resolution / low magnification / low pointsize. Why not embed the font in the output EPS or PDF?

              - Dov

    - Dov Isaacs, former Adobe Principal Scientist (April 30, 1990 - May 30, 2021)
    M
    MGMerckAuthor
    Participant
    November 6, 2009

    Thank you, Dov.

    I didn't know outlining fonts can degrade output quality.

    iStockphoto doesn't allow embedding of fonts in the contributor files they offer for sale. Anyhow, the fonts will typically be used to set a representative business name in the the logo design to give the customer an idea of what their actual business name might look like. When the customer purchases a logo design, if they want to place their actual business' name in the design, they will have to license the font and do it themselves, or go to a third party with a license to do it for them.

    Dov Isaacs
    Dov Isaacs
    Legend
    November 7, 2009

    When one represents text via "outlining," you lose the intelligence of the fonts. High quality fonts employ a technique called "hinting" that assists in rendering the text using the font's bezier (Type 1 and OpenType CFF) or quadratic (TrueType and OpenType TrueType) outlines. When the text is rendered, it isn't simply a geometric scaling based on those outlines, but rather, intelligence is used when you start running out of pixels in the device space (such as for low resolution screen display, small point sizes, and/or very delicate type with thin stems and curves) to render such that it is readable and not a blotch of pixels turned on. In use for a logo or non-technical illustrations, you typically are not using very small type and thus hopefully you will not see much in the way of artifacts when you do this outlining.

              - Dov

    - Dov Isaacs, former Adobe Principal Scientist (April 30, 1990 - May 30, 2021)
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