I have an A4 poster I'm going to be sending to a commercial printer. If I send it as a print ready PDF can i embed the fonts in the document instead of having to outline the text?
On the main body copy of the poster the text is 12pt and looks awful when outlined.
If it is possible to embed the fonts, how do I go about doing this?
When saving as PDF, in the Save As PDF dialog box, highlight Advanced on the left side. The default for 'Subset fonts when percent of characters used is less than' is 100%. Change it to 0%, zero percent.
Ton is right that embedding the entire font can increase the file size. However, most fonts don't unduly increase file size, and file size is usually not an issue for printing. In theory, the font should be embedded with the default setting of 100%, but I have sometimes experienced issues with the fonts unless the font is completely embedded as I described at zero%. As Monika recommended, it's always a good idea to communicate with your printing office.
I think you have a misconception that fonts are not included into a saved PDF by default
The fact is that fonts are embeded, the same way linked images are included too. PDF is defined as portable for such a reason.
Second, outlining text is completely not recomended, there is no reason for doing it for printing. Outlining loses fonts hinting, and at small sizes and low screen resolution at printing, it could play a disaster.
Thanks for reaching out. In addition to good information shared above, I'd request checking out this help article as well to know more about fonts & troubleshooting.
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