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cbenci
Known Participant
April 28, 2015
Answered

Feature Request - Fonts to Curves

  • April 28, 2015
  • 1 reply
  • 20193 views

Apart from the UI issues of Acrobat DC, one feature I would like to see added is a button that converts fonts to curves.

The watermark / flattener preview method is unacceptable and clunky in 2015.

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

    There is a single fixup in Acrobat DC Preflight under the Document category entitled “Convert fonts to outlines” that will do exactly what you want. No reason to request a feature that is already there!  

    That having been said, there are very few good reasons to convert text to outlines other than for very specialized artistic effects and you wouldn't be doing those in Acrobat anyway.

    We are aware of various “print service providers” who are under the distinct wrong impression that converting text to outlines is somehow more reliable that leaving text as text realized by fonts. Other than some dicey, prehistoric RIPs based on non-Adobe technology going back over fifteen years or more, we are not aware of any problem during the RIP process due to fonts. If the font is embedded in the PDF and view correctly in Adobe Acrobat, it should RIP! If you have a “bad font,” you won't be able to view the PDF file in Acrobat nor will converting text to outlines even work.

    There are also many downsides to this Luddite practice. You lose the hinting of the font and often end up with overly bold printed output, especially with fine detailed serif fonts at text sizes. The PDF files become very bloated. RIP and even display performance suffers terribly.

    Adobe specifically advises end users to avoid print service providers who demand/require PDF files with so-called “outlined text!”

                - Dov

    1 reply

    Dov Isaacs
    Dov IsaacsCorrect answer
    Brainiac
    April 28, 2015

    There is a single fixup in Acrobat DC Preflight under the Document category entitled “Convert fonts to outlines” that will do exactly what you want. No reason to request a feature that is already there!  

    That having been said, there are very few good reasons to convert text to outlines other than for very specialized artistic effects and you wouldn't be doing those in Acrobat anyway.

    We are aware of various “print service providers” who are under the distinct wrong impression that converting text to outlines is somehow more reliable that leaving text as text realized by fonts. Other than some dicey, prehistoric RIPs based on non-Adobe technology going back over fifteen years or more, we are not aware of any problem during the RIP process due to fonts. If the font is embedded in the PDF and view correctly in Adobe Acrobat, it should RIP! If you have a “bad font,” you won't be able to view the PDF file in Acrobat nor will converting text to outlines even work.

    There are also many downsides to this Luddite practice. You lose the hinting of the font and often end up with overly bold printed output, especially with fine detailed serif fonts at text sizes. The PDF files become very bloated. RIP and even display performance suffers terribly.

    Adobe specifically advises end users to avoid print service providers who demand/require PDF files with so-called “outlined text!”

                - Dov

    - Dov Isaacs, former Adobe Principal Scientist (April 30, 1990 - May 30, 2021)
      S
      scottt53464138
      New Participant
      May 2, 2017

      Hi, Dov -

      Thanks for your post. There are many times as a graphic designer when ( such as for early-draft conceptual-only layout purposes, ex: while the rights to a new font are being reqested/purchased/in process), often need to quickly outline text into vector ( very often in fact ), so that you can quickly select the object and extract the text as a vector piece of artwork, to use in draft layouts.   I work in a large company where one team ( ex: our Creative Agency ) department has rights to a new font, while other departments who also need it for using in matching collateral, while in process of waiting for / seeking another license / installation of that same font to match work that our Agency does in other collateral (which we always do ultimately obtain before publically using the fonts, yet it slows down our creative draft-process to not be able to just quickly outline them to use in Draft design comps, rather than have to track down the creator of the original art ( ex: In-Design) file, and request they export an outlined version of the text and/ or etc.. etc..

      Right now, the only workaround ( which is a bit clunky to be honest)  when one may just want to go to 'Tools' in Acrobat DC, click on the text, and have an option to 'convert to outline' ,  is to use the feature you suggest, make sure the Preflight feature that you mention is on, run the pre-flight, saving an 'outlined copy/version' of that PDF page, open just that single page into Illustrator, hand-select all of the broken up/outlined ( ex: bezier curve objects), and then re-group them, to create/save a 'draft/placeholder' outlined artwork piece (ex: a logo made of outlined text), vs. simply just selecting the text, convert to outlines, copy/paste into Illustrator (or other program), done.   Considerable time-saver.

      Basically what would be nice is a shortcut feature like that to be added, for your team's consideration, that would be helpful, rather than having locate the buried outline-fonts feature in the pre-flight checklist process, when you may not need to run a full pre-flight.

      I hope this is helpful to understand a use-case where someone might like this feature.  Many of the other features of DC Pro are going that direction, a la to simplified button actions ( which is great) but the simpler to access/use the, easier the better for regular Acrobat users.

      Thank you for considering this!

      Scott

      S
      scottt53464138
      New Participant
      May 17, 2017

      Hi Scott,

      Two points:

      The first is that you yourself can easily do what you are proposing. Acrobat has a feature called Actions which effectively allows you to create a sequence of commands to perform on either the currently-open file or a file that you can prompt for. These commands include accessing well-hidden Preflight profiles including any custom profiles that you may create yourself!

      Check out the Action Wizard and let us know if that meets your needs for this.

      As a bonus, I've attached my sample Action that you can import into Acrobat via the Manage Actions feature of the Action Wizard! (Note that you must extract it from the .zip file first!)

      One important point, though. I understand your use case, but be aware that many if not most font EULAs (End User License Agreements) specifically prohibit “outlining” or rasterization to get around either embedding restrictions and especially not having the font licensed. As such, the strategy you propose may actually violate the EULA of the font that you are “trying out.”

                - Dov


      Thank you for your reply, Dov!

      Thanks for letting me know about Acrobat's actions feature ( I only knew about it in Photoshop), that is great, and attaching the download sample action.  Will take it for a spin!

      Yes, we always watermark as 'demo/not for use' and then properly obtain EULA font license permission before production use, but something like this will help as a timesaver.  Thanks again for this, and for your time.

      Have a nice one!

      Scott

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