Convert fonts to outlines - when is absolutely needed?

[Guest]

Hello,

Do I need to convert the fonts to outlines when exporting to .pdf?

How about before packaging the finished job? (I might be wrong, but I think not since the fonts are packaged along with all the elements).

Thank you!

[Steve Werner · Accepted solution]

You should really never have to convert fonts to outlines when exporting to PDF.

Here's a posting I wrote almost 10 years ago which is still true today:

Outlining Fonts: Is It Necessary? - InDesignSecrets : InDesignSecrets

Occasionally, a printer may insist on having fonts outlined, even though it's really not necessary. This is the best method in the rare case when it's necessary:

Outlining Fonts, the 2016 Edition - InDesignSecrets : InDesignSecrets

[Guest]

Thank you Steve for the prompt answer. I am honored to meet you. As dealing with my first project in InDesign, I've read dozens of articles from your website and always found an answer to my problems.

Unfortunately the printer said they need the fonts converted to outlines, that's how they work and I was wondering if exported pdf will give them tall the font related information they need to print quality text without converting to outlines as they requested.

[Steve Werner]

Read the quote from Dov Isaacs, Adobe Principal Scientist, in the 2nd linked article:

"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."

I'll stick by what he says.

[Geоrge]

@Steve Werner

You are live in the future. Don't forget that somebody live in the real past. Such as, my city with many small-prepress where still not buy CTP and using old film of imagesetter. They are really need files with outlined text in next decade of years

And, yes, in my city some white-black newspapers are use transparent paper for light by lamp to print forms, and not use imagesetter film(cheaper).

@badpixxxel

Forget about outlines in ID. Forget forever. Sometime you will forget to save old non-outline indd and will tear your hairs because can't correct your text.

Do it this in Acrobat Pro with PitStop, as example. Or by Acrobat Pro Flattener (I prefer Pitstop, because native acrobat feature have a bugs periodically). But if your fonts are "good" you can use flattener.

[Steve Werner]

Thanks, George. That's why I included Dov's recommendation of the best way to outline (if you are forced to).

[Dov Isaacs]

Ah, I see people are using my name in vain again!  

To be very explicit, if one must outline text, the only reliable place to do it is within Acrobat and with Acrobat Pro DC, you can do that using one of the provided Preflight Profiles, Convert Fonts to Outlines. You don't need to play tricks with flatteners and you don't need to pay extra for PitStop (nice software, but totally unnecessary for this task).

That having been said, even with old film imagesetters, the concept of outlining text is rubbish. It is one of those urban legends (that outlining text — converting text rendered with fonts to filled polygons — is “safer” than using text rendered with fonts) that keeps on being propagated from one poorly trained prepress operator to the next. All you accomplish is production of a PDF file that is exceptionally bloated in size, takes much, much longer to RIP, often prints with significantly lower quality, and is neither editable (Acrobat text touchup) or searchable. When I dare anyone propagating this “conversion to outlines” rubbish to show me examples where this is really necessary (assuming the PDF file with the embedded font displays correctly on-screen), the only response I get is either “I'll get back to you” or “but others told me that this is true.” You should reasonably assume that any so-called prepress professional that unconditionally demands “outlined text” for all print jobs likely has other significant gaps in their professional training as well.

          - Dov

[jane-e]

Dov Isaacs wrote:

Ah, I see people are using my name in vain again!

- Dov

At least they are spelling it correctly!

[Dov Isaacs]

Jane Edwards wrote:

Dov Isaacs wrote:

Ah, I see people are using my name in vain again!

- Dov

At least they are spelling it correctly!

At least if they print it out, they don't have to discard it in a ​geniza​! 

[Geоrge]

@Dov Isaacs

>> When I dare anyone propagating this “conversion to outlines” rubbish to show me examples where this is really necessary

you can't see this by the soft. You can see this on the printed film. Or OMG in ready print circulation if film/form not reviewed before print. I see by my eyes, many times when "not-good" types converts to garbage in some places of film if not do outline.

geniza? What?

[Test Screen Name]

Ok, to follow up... You have seen cases of bad fonts in film. how old is your RIP software? Did you report this to the makers of that software?

[katariiina]

Hello!

Someone has designed logo, without converting the text to outlines. So, I have to convert the pdf to outlines.

[Abambo]

chibbychubby  wrote

Someone has designed logo, without converting the text to outlines. So, I have to convert the pdf to outlines.

If your logo file is an Illustrator PDF, you will loose the Illustrator data. Best is to get the font used. You only need the font if you edit the logo into something new. Most of the times this can be avoided.

In any case, it is never a good idea to edit a logo if you are not the original designer...

[Jay Riether]

In 2016, perhaps electronic distribution was not as common as it is here in 2019. I send PDFs to my clients. When I converted my template to use a "pro" font, my file sizes doubled. Using Preflight and converting to outlines, those proposals shrank right back down to pre-"pro" size. So there is certainly a valid use-case for converting to outlines, and I would hope a default setting for such....

[Eugene Tyson]

I highly recommend you find a new printers.

[Abambo]

There is absolutely no reason to create outline fonts for InDesign generated PDFs. This said, there are service providers asking for outlined fonts. In all of my recent cases, those were Asian print service providers. May be they are working with old technology.

I need to say that even in pre-pdf times, I mostly created EPS or PS files with embedded fonts and that was quite sufficient to get high quality prints.

If a print service partner in my region would ask me for vectorized fonts, I would cancel the job with them.

The only logical reason today to outline fonts is with logos.

[Dov Isaacs]

Lucien SCHILLING wrote:

…The only logical reason today to outline fonts is with logos.

Even for logos, outlining text is not really necessary. Many companies, including Adobe, actually have a logo font. Glyphs from a logo font or even from a commercial font used in a logo can readily be embedded, subsetted, in PDF (or even EPS) and yield much higher quality than the “outlined” equivalent.

(Note to those of you who will then say, but the font doesn't allow embedding … The fact is that most fonts that don't permit embedding in PDF or EPS also don't allow outlining or rasterization as a workaround. Read the EULAs!!!)

Yes, outlining makes sense if you need to make a .WMF or .EMF version of a logo for use with Microsoft Office products that don't support the PDF imaging model.

In the general case, outlining makes sense only when you need artistic effects on glyphs that cannot be readily achieved through normal font text rendering transformations including obliquing, stretching either horizontally or vertically, rotation, etc. (Again, read your EULAs — some fonts don't allow for this, either!)

          - Dov

[Eugene Tyson]

It would be wonderful if designers did actually embed the font in the ai/pdf/eps files, but they don't and work on the old school way of outlining everything. This is probably due to misinformation being passed down from generation to generation of designer/prepress people.

In regards to the MS Office debacle, I have greater success just dropping the .ai file directly into MS Office. It turns out a lot sharper. MS seems to do some under the hood operation to convert it to an appropriate file format.

As for outlining fonts, I'm of the opinion that  this only needs to be done if you're going to do some ornamental decoration or flourishes with the letters. There are other legitimate reasons (for example one time the RIP kept stripping out 1 letter in a sentence on a large format - outlined the fonts and it worked (didn't have time to investigate further)).

Let's just say - don't outline fonts 99% of the time - but you can do it if you need to do it for

[Dov Isaacs]

“Dropping an AI file directly into MS Office” may appear to work with Microsoft Office applications under MacOS, but it certainly doesn't work with Microsoft Office under Windows!!! And the reality is that when it does work under MacOS, it is only because the .AI file was saved with PDF compatibility in which case not only is the Illustrator format data stored as private data in a PDF wrapper, but imageable PDF content is also put into the file.

If you try to place a PDF file into an Office document under Windows, at best you will get a relatively low resolution, low quality raster representation of the page. El Yucko!

          - Dov

[Abambo]

Dov Isaacs wrote:

(Note to those of you who will then say, but the font doesn't allow embedding … The fact is that most fonts that don't permit embedding in PDF or EPS also don't allow outlining or rasterization as a workaround. Read the EULAs!!!)

Those fonts are practically unusable. Embedding fonts is a must as of today.

Yes, outlining makes sense if you need to make a .WMF or .EMF version of a logo for use with Microsoft Office products that don't support the PDF imaging model.

Except for the very latest versions of Office, where I din't try, .WMF and .EMF files are unusable for Microsoft Office programs. I have much better results with using JPEG or PNG. I discourage my users importing EMF/WMF file formats.

What software companies outside of Adobe supports the PDF imaging model? Microsoft doesn't! They even don't support their own model.

Dov Isaacs wrote:

Even for logos, outlining text is not really necessary. Many companies, including Adobe, actually have a logo font. Glyphs from a logo font or even from a commercial font used in a logo can readily be embedded, subsetted, in PDF (or even EPS) and yield much higher quality than the “outlined” equivalent.

Many companies: yes, most companies: no. Well Adobe is not quite an example for a standard company, isn't it? Most of the small mechanical workshops around the corner do not have a customized font or glyph.

When creating a logo, I include always the verctorized version, because it gives the least headache for me. Anyhow, most logos are heavily customized. Opening my own designs for editing and modifications creates some problems, because I need to reload the fonts used. It's not that an embeded font does allow editing the logo, even in parts unrelated to the font (like new colour schemes).

[Dov Isaacs]

Lucien SCHILLING,

Interesting comment about EMF/WMF. At least under Windows with Office 2013/2016, EMF and WMF do in fact “work” although you need to be care what produces those files. Note that EMF and WMF support vector. JPEG and PNG are raster formats that can't scale and maintain full quality. And JPEG is lossy with particularly bad artifacts when compressing what could/should be vector or text content.

I'm in violent agreement with you with regards to font EULAs that don't permit at least preview and print embedding (as well as those that charge “royalties” for distribution of PDF files in which their fonts are embedded) — they are effectively useless!

          - Dov

[Abambo]

Dov Isaacs wrote:

Interesting comment about EMF/WMF. At least under Windows with Office 2013/2016, EMF and WMF do in fact “work” although you need to be care what produces those files.

I'm using Word since the very beginning of Windows 3.1. That means that I had a lot of bad experience with Office. It seams that Adobe shares my concerns because "Export for Office" produces ... .PNG files. I have to admit that for the latest Office, I did not check.

Dov Isaacs wrote:

JPEG and PNG are raster formats that can't scale and maintain full quality. And JPEG is lossy with particularly bad artifacts when compressing what could/should be vector or text content.

Agree! As always you need to know what you do ... Or at least do as you where told to do.

[BobLevine]

If you happen to need WMF files, I have found that the best application to output them is still CorelDRAW.

[Abambo]

The problem is not creation of but importing WMF to Word. My conclusion is to avoid EMF and WMF.

[John Mensinger]

Feierwoon wrote:

The problem is not creation of but importing WMF to Word.

Hmmm...never had a problem here.

In any case, the first thing I always attempt when I need vector art in MS Office is Copy / Paste Special > Enhanced Metafile... It doesn't work with 100% of the possible clipboard contents (like live Illustrator blends, effects, etc.), but when it does work, it's perfect.