Skip to main content
H
howie57
Participant
April 30, 2015
Answered

Is permanent custom font kerning possible?

  • April 30, 2015
  • 1 reply
  • 2520 views

I want to be able to adjust the kerning permanently for 2 characters in a family of Adobe fonts. Can I do this? (I constantly have to do this by hand and it would be great if the font could "learn" my desired kerning.)

It's Myriad Pro family. The C and lower-case R have not enough space on the right. (Cl looks like backwards D, 2 lower-case R's next to each other nearly connect, etc.). Even on the Adobe Type sample PDF of this font you can see that the C is always too close to the D compared with all the rest of the letter spacing. Is there a way to get access to a font's kerning tables? It would save me so much time if I could make this adjustment just once for all eternity.

    Correct answer Dov Isaacs

    The kerning tables for OpenType fonts are stored in the font itself. You cannot make a permanent change unless you modify the font itself. There are various font editing programs ranging from free to expensive, simple with few options to very complex with Swiss Army Knife features for modifying any aspect of a font.

    And you must make sure that you follow the font vendor's license in terms of whether you legally permitted to modify the font and then whether you can distribute this modified font. In any case, to avoid conflicts with other instances of this font which might subsequently get installed on your system, you should save any modified font with a modified font name as well as file name.

                     - Dov

    1 reply

    Dov Isaacs
    Dov IsaacsCorrect answer
    Legend
    April 30, 2015

    The kerning tables for OpenType fonts are stored in the font itself. You cannot make a permanent change unless you modify the font itself. There are various font editing programs ranging from free to expensive, simple with few options to very complex with Swiss Army Knife features for modifying any aspect of a font.

    And you must make sure that you follow the font vendor's license in terms of whether you legally permitted to modify the font and then whether you can distribute this modified font. In any case, to avoid conflicts with other instances of this font which might subsequently get installed on your system, you should save any modified font with a modified font name as well as file name.

                     - Dov

    - Dov Isaacs, former Adobe Principal Scientist (April 30, 1990 - May 30, 2021)
    H
    howie57Author
    Participant
    April 30, 2015

    thank you!

    Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement
    Using the community Terms of use Privacy Cookie preferences Do not sell or share my personal information ad choicesAdChoices