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Unwanted bold fonts when converting AI to pdf

Community Beginner ,
Aug 10, 2008 Aug 10, 2008

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When converting fonts to outlines in Ai(cs3) and then saving it as a pdf (high quality print) the letter "l" appears to be bold in pdf file. Does this affect my printwork? or is a blitch in the pdf viewer or else?.
I've tried converting directly from illustrator and through distiller, both the same results.
Anybody?

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Community Expert ,
Aug 10, 2008 Aug 10, 2008

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Ernst,

How does it look when you print?
Which font?
Is it l as in letter or I as in Illy?
Which versions?
Does it happen under any moon?

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Community Beginner ,
Aug 10, 2008 Aug 10, 2008

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Hello Jacob

Thanks for responding
It looks fine when I print it on my inktjet
The font is myriad pro regular
The difference between the fonts dissapears on screen when I enlarge the pdf to about 800%.
you can have a look at a screenshot here http://www.11q.eu/vb.jpg

Ernst

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Community Expert ,
Aug 10, 2008 Aug 10, 2008

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This is normal because most fonts are hinted. Hinting adjusts those paths for optimal display or printout. The higher the resolution or size of type, the closer the grid and the type's paths conform to one another, so the less obvious the hinting is. At large type sizes (like when you zoom in) or high resolution (like your printer) the less effective hinting is. This hinting is only done on type, so converting to paths removed the hinting.

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Community Beginner ,
Aug 10, 2008 Aug 10, 2008

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Hello Scott,
Thanks for your remarks....does this mean that the PDF I made is suitable for printing......will the bold "l" not show up in my folder??? (probably a stupid questuion , but I'm a complete newby concerning Ai and PDF formats)

Ernst

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Community Expert ,
Aug 10, 2008 Aug 10, 2008

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It is suitable for printing. The lack of hinting will generally thicken your text by one device dot. Your monitor's device dot is one pixel. Widening a two pixel wide letter by one pixel is noticeable. But the same file printed on a high resolution press might mean the difference between a 100 dot wide letter and a 101 dot wide letter. On a 2400 DPI plate, that makes the letter 1/2400 of an inch wider.

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Community Beginner ,
Aug 10, 2008 Aug 10, 2008

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Thanks for your help Scott!!!!

grtz

Ersnt

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LEGEND ,
Apr 17, 2009 Apr 17, 2009

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Scott's got it absolutely right. Check your pdfs in maximum zoom and you will see that the outlined type is perfect to all intents and purposes. Embedding fonts SHOULD work these days but accidents have happened, so if you are using unusual or home-made fonts, outlining them will make your pdfs foolproof and there is no chance of them reverting to Courier (which sometimes happened in the old days). I usually outline fonts before making pdfs, at least on smalller print jobs that don't contain much text. Saves you having to worry about things going wrong at the printers. The down side is that if you have made a typo the printer won't be able to correct it, so you need to be very thorough in your proofreading.

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Guest
Oct 27, 2009 Oct 27, 2009

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This all made perfect sense to me until you said the solution was to outline the text.  I also use myriad pro for the text in diagrams I prepare in Illustrator and save as .ai files.  Once finalised, I select all the text (usually on a separate layer) and outline it (Type->Create Outlines), then save the resulting file as a .eps file.

In Illustrator, it looks perfect.  After inserting the diagram into my document in InDesign CS3 (Object->Anchored Object->Insert, followed by File->Place) the diagrams are all pixellated, which I'm not greatly surprised by, but when I export the whole document as a PDF and check it out in Adobe Reader, the lower-case ells and upper-case i's are both thicker and taller than the rest of the text.

Printed out it looks fine, but like others, I want to make my documents available online.

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Guest
Oct 28, 2009 Oct 28, 2009

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I have found the solution, while chasing a different problem with my illustrations, and it's a problem with Adobe Reader.  I'm using 9.2.0.

Click Edit -> Preferences

Select Page Display

Uncheck Enhance Thin Lines.

This solves two problems.  First, the bold ells and uppercase i's revert to normal.  The other problem I had was that, again in Reader, if I zoomed in on an annotated diagram (a piece of electronic equipment with the various buttons labeled - a ring containing a number and a line to the button) the lines progressively disappeared.  Zoom back out and they magically reappear.  This, too, is solved by unchecking Enhance Thin Lines.

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New Here ,
Nov 13, 2009 Nov 13, 2009

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I hope this might help you all -

File > Save as > Adobe PDF

Save Adobe PDF Dialog box Open, now choose

> Adobe PDF Preset > High Quality Print > Save PDF

Regards,

Vipul Pawaskar

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Explorer ,
Oct 14, 2011 Oct 14, 2011

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Thank you Robert!

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New Here ,
Oct 31, 2014 Oct 31, 2014

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Do you know this was an old issue and you just make my day!!! this is the REAL problem SOLUTION folks, great advice!!!!!

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Community Expert ,
Oct 18, 2011 Oct 18, 2011

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Ernst,

Your problem has nothing to do with the PDF since that prints fine, but how Acrobat is displaying the .pdf.

Acrobat >> preferences >> page display >> Enhance Thin Lines (OFF)

Picture 2.png

Enhance lines on

Picture 3.png

Enhance lines OFF

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New Here ,
Apr 16, 2009 Apr 16, 2009

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Ok, I understand that the bold L will print correctly, but is there any way to stop it from happening on the preview?

We want to use the PDF online and don't want the L's stealing the show.

Thanks

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Engaged ,
Apr 16, 2009 Apr 16, 2009

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It's a common problem with viewing pdfs. No solution ASFAIK apart from converting the type to Outline. But that then increases file size.

JJ

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New Here ,
Jul 28, 2016 Jul 28, 2016

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Dear JJ,

I used an adobe preflight fix up (Covert text to outlines) on the client provided pdf document (Brochure). It created all the text to outlines for sure but on the other hand when it finished the fixup, it made the 'l's in the text bolder/thicker. One of the similar problems Ernst was facing.

I tried printing it on my high resolution printed Richo C571 and to my disappointment it did show up on the print as well! How do we solve that problem? Any ideas?

Thanks.

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Community Expert ,
Jul 28, 2016 Jul 28, 2016

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Don't convert text to outlines.

When you convert text to outlines, the hinting information is lost resulting in variable thickness.

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New Here ,
Jul 28, 2016 Jul 28, 2016

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Dear Ton,

Thank you for your quick reply.

The reason I convert the text to curves is simply because when I print the document that is provided, in certain places and pages the fonts appear weird, they change to symbols or something for some reason. Probably because they aren't embedded into the document by the client.

What's the solution in that case?

Looking forwards to your best advice.

Thanks.

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Community Expert ,
Jul 28, 2016 Jul 28, 2016

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Stefan, I don't think you can solve the problem of non embedded fonts on your side, the client who made the pdf has to take care of that.

If you cannot ask the client to make a proper pdf, then i am afraid that the thickening of the fonts after outlining is something you have to live with. But the higher the resolution of the printer, the less visible the thickening becomes.

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Community Expert ,
Jul 28, 2016 Jul 28, 2016

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Another way to solve the font issue: to have the same fonts installed on your computer as were used during the creation of the pdf.

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New Here ,
Jun 06, 2022 Jun 06, 2022

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I think this might have solved it for me, as after installing the fonts, they started to look better and no more bold Ls everywhere. Apart from installing fonts, I did copy and paste the Artboards in different files into one file for my purposes, previously they were individually exported and now together incase, this has had an affect on the outcome... Cheers

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Community Expert ,
Jul 28, 2016 Jul 28, 2016

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And what about the "enhance thin lines" setting? Was it on or off when outlining the text?

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Community Expert ,
Jul 28, 2016 Jul 28, 2016

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Aren't that 2 different things? The fattening of type caused by removing the hinting and the enhancing of a stroke?

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Guest
Oct 17, 2011 Oct 17, 2011

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"Thickening" of square/rectangular shapes in PDFs (this is seen only in Acrobat, not in Apple's Preview) is discussed here:

http://www.underconsideration.com/speakup/archives/004301.html

with a solution (by "fixing" the shapes in Illustrator).

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