Extract information from a pdf

[jptree]

I am trying to figure out which fonts are available in a pdf. Adobe Acrobat settings include some information, however there is some information about the weight of a font (such as if the font is semi bold) which are not included in the Acrobat edit menu. Illustrator does have this information when I use it to open a PDF, but I am having trouble accessing all of the information about fonts. Is there any way to extract this kind of information about a PDF using Adobe Illustrator?

[J E L]

Hi @jptree, I don't know how to look up fonts embedded in a PDF file from within Illustrator, but from within Acrobat under File > Properties (Ctrl+D), on the Fonts tab you can see all the fonts in the document, including their subsets. If you need more details, you can run a Preflight analysis on your PDF. Hope that's helpful.

[manal shanableh]

when you open a pdf file within illustrator the text will be created outline by default, but some text will stay not outline (depends how this file created), so give it a try, open the pdf in Ai and go to type>find /replace font you will see fonts used in the document.

[J E L]

That's good to know, @manal shanableh, thanks! I never had to use it before (note the "find" button won't find you anything).

[manal shanableh]

thats mean all text are created outline. it will show the fonts used in the document (if there is any)

i used to edite many PDFs in illustrator my work, some text are not created outline so i can see fonts in the find panel.

this is a pdf converted from word, i have opened in Ai, some text are created outline but some no.

It shows manny fonts in the document.

[J E L]

Ah, yes, depends on the file. Makes sense!

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

"when you open a pdf file within illustrator the text will be created outline by default"

Not so.

It will attempt to open it live first, and failing that, will convert to outline. This is usually because of differences in how the original creator of the PDF handles type and how Illustrator handles type. Because some things can't be duplicated, Illustrator will convert those to outline so they "preserve appearance".

The issue with subsetted fonts is that they are meant for printing/output only. they are NOT available for editing (which you really shouldn't be doing in a PDF anyway), and most times are re-encoded acordingly. You need to have them on your system, but there are some fonts that Acrobat will not play nice with, the most infamous are Mac .ttc fonts (TrueType Collection fonts). Acrobat can only see 4 styles within a font, and .ttc fonts like Helevetica Neue have 14 styles, so you may NOT be able to see a particular weight in Acrobat.