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Anonymous

Answered

Font showing up bolder on some pages

Forum|Forum|16 years ago
April 19, 2009
11 replies
78735 views

Hi,

when I generate a PDF file from my Indesign file, some of the pages end up with the font being noticeably thicker than others.

Please see the attached PDF - pages 4, 7, 8, 10 and 15 have this bolder-looking text on them.

My whole actual PDF file is over 100 pages and this sort of problem occurs on about 25-35% of the pages.

I have no idea what could be causing this.

Any ideas?

Thanks

Chuckee

Newbook_J11_small_firstpart.pdf

Correct answer artworksg99913146

I think I have the solution.

This issue (that some fonts seem bolder in the pdf) is caused by some effect. It can be a drop shadow, an inner shadow, a blending mode option or something like that. And it is happening on the texts that are on the blank areas. Right?

So the solution is to have the text block filled with white instead of blank.

I had the same issue for so long but the above solution has worked 100%.

Cheers, dudes.

A

artworksg99913146Correct answer

Participant

I think I have the solution.

This issue (that some fonts seem bolder in the pdf) is caused by some effect. It can be a drop shadow, an inner shadow, a blending mode option or something like that. And it is happening on the texts that are on the blank areas. Right?

So the solution is to have the text block filled with white instead of blank.

I had the same issue for so long but the above solution has worked 100%.

Cheers, dudes.

M

Mike Stonelake

Participant

I had the same problem and found that I had inadvertently used a spot colour for the text. Once I converted it to process colour it sorted out the problem - so worth checking at least.

Steve Werner

Community Expert

You're editing on a conversation almost one decade old.

I'm locking this thread. If you have further questions start a new discussion with complete information about your version of InDesign and system.

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Amanda_Y

Participant

I've encountered this issue also and though it's a belated answer thought it was worthwhile responding as it took quite a bit of internet researching. In my situation, the font was light and quite thin. It was an indesign file with a linked illustrator logo. I found a post which said to change a preference in acrobat ie. turn off the option to "enhance thin lines". Then write the PDF. It worked for me!

Adobe Acrobat showing thick "L" and "I" characters

cardinem47387408

Participant

I had this issue on the second page of a two-page document. I found out that two images were causing the text of the second page to appear bolder when exported. One image was a JPEG and the other was a PNG. I resolved the issue by saving both as EPS file.

awalker526

Participant

I had this same issue and was able to fix it after much cursing. Here's what worked for me (using Indesign CS5.5 on a PC):

First - I did everything suggested here: Avoid unwanted “bold type” and odd, shaded boxes in your InDesign document - The Graphic Mac

I put all layers with images underneath text or in a separate layer folder underneath text layers.
I made sure all the graphic files (.EPS, .AI, .PSD, etc) linked to the document were consistently using the same color mode. I was working with a indesign intended for print, so Edit > Transparency Blend Space was CMYK, so I made sure all my linked images were also CMYK. A couple of them were still RGB. (If the doc was for electronic use only -- or if I had only .JPG or .PNG files to work with -- I would have used RGB for everything instead. Just be consistent.)
I also flattened any photoshop .PSD files linked in the indesign document.
Finally, there was one linked vector image that was saved as .AI, from a newer version of Illustrator. I opened the .AI file and saved it as .EPS instead, and re-linked it to the .EPS file.

Also for me, if any object had Effects that mess with transparency (e.g., like Drop Shadow), it would cause the issue to persist no matter what. Removing drop shadow (or just doing it in photoshop and then flattening it) helped.

lorenap49899769

Participant

In my case it worked by changing from CMYK to RGB.

For doing that you need to go to Edit > Transparency Blend Space.

Good luck!

C

chodorowicz_

Participant

I've had today a similiar problem and I've wasted several hours "debugging" it so maybe my solution will help somebody. First of all my problem was kind of "opposite" - the pages with transparent png/psd had slimmer, jagged text + the pasted transparent image looked kind of bleak - aftery many tries the thing that workded for me was putting on every page (through master page) a small transparent (0.01%) rectangle - all the pages got then original correct form of text.

This bug is really terrible and occurs from what I've read since CS3 (I'm using CS5) - I cannot believe that Adobe haven't dealt with it yet...

Jongware

Community Expert

It's not really a "bug". Because of the transparency, your PDF viewer (Acrobat?) switches to another drawing algorithm: slower, because it has to calculate the correct color to display per pixel, but more accurate. For text-only pages, Acrobat uses a faster algorithm.

If you switch on "Overprint Preview" in your Acrobat, you should see everything the same.

It's also possible you accidentally put something transparent over text -- that causes the text (and all other vector data) underneath it to be rasterized. You should try to avoid this, as it probably will show up in print (especially if you forgot to export with a high resolution setting for Transparency Flattening).

C

chodorowicz_

Participant

Many thanks for these explanations. It surely makes more sense now (and the "overprint preview" in Acrobat worked as you said). But still, I believe that this behaviour of Indesign+Acrobat is very confusing and difficult to debug, especially for novice users. I think there should be some setting in Indesign export options to force the same rendering algorithm for all pages.

Thanks again!

Peter Spier

Community Expert

Chuckee sent me the file and I've been looking it over.

The file is non-facing pages and most pages do not contain any transparency. On my Windows system the type looks normal on those pages until I switch to Overprint Preview, at which point it gets slightly bolder, an expected behavior that has been around forever.

I've tried exporting and printing to PDF, and the only pages that appear darker to me are the exported pages with unflattened transparency (I cheated for testing by duplicating a page with with an image, then making that image 99% opaque).

I looked at the file history, and I note that it was originally a CS2 document. I'd recommend you export to .inx from CS3 to remove the missing plugins references. It's also a Mac doc, and I'm on Windows. I have some vague memories that this issue behaves differently on the two platforms, and that may in fact be what Chuckee is seeing. I'm inclined to suggest trying an export to PDF/X-1a to see if that helps.

I was going to ask why this wasn't set up as facing pages, but I've just remembered that you said it was going to be distributed as an on-screen PDF, not printed. My personal inclination would still be to make facing pages now to mirror your page borders, and then it would be ready to re-purpose for print when it becomes wildly popular. You can set the file properties in the PDF to open as a two-page spread with single cover page.

Not much help, I'm afraid.

Peter

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Anonymous

OK - I've tried everything that people have suggested, and no luck.

Peter - thanks for looking at the file. Can I ask what you meant by "the only pages that appear darker to me are the exported pages with unflattened transparency."

If that is the case, then how can I remove this unflattened transparency from those pages, while still keeping the images there? I really don't know if this is possible or not.

Peter Spier

Community Expert

As I said, this may look different on Mac than it does on PC. They use different schemes for rendering type.

In my testing pages with transparency ALWAYS show emboldened type in InDesign, and ALL pages show it if you switch to overprint preview. I think this has to do with the overprint preview engine, which I don't claim to understand.

When I export to PDF using a preset like [Press Quality] with a compatibility of Acrobat 5, which leaves the transparency live, those pages with transparency look darker on screen in the PDF. If I use a setting like PDF/X-1a that flattens transparency (Acrobat 4 compatibility) I don't see the darkening. Printing to PDF instead of exporting also will always flatten transparency.

The downside to flattening transparency is it can lead to other screen artifacts like stitching -- thin white lines around regions in the file -- on screen and in low resolution printing. For your file I don't think that's going to be a major issue as for the most part you don't have transparency on top of other objects.

To get a feel for what you should see, make a two-page file, and set both pages identically. Add a small color filled rectangle somewhere on both pages, and on one set the opacity of the rectangle to 99%. That's enough to make that page show transparency problems, but not to make the object visually different on screen in most cases. Now make a PDF using a variety of settings and printing/exporting. When you view the PDFs, look at the pages separately and jump back and forth. If the type is the same you won't se anything as you shift, if one is bolder it will jump out at you. Jump from flattened to unflattened versions the same way.

Does that help?

Peter

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Anonymous

One more suggestion: My battles with transparency turning text dark (which, as in your case, is critical since my end-product is the online PDF) were resolved when I stopped Exporting to PDF from InDesign and began Printing to PDF.

Dave

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Eugene Tyson

Community Expert

A long shot

What can happen is that you have images with that have transparency.

And you have transparency flattner preset that says Convert Text to Outlines.

When it hits a page with transparency it converts the text to Outlines. Which makes the glyphs bolder.

To see if this is the problem check the Transparency Flattner Presets and see what one you're using and if Convert Text to Outlines is applied.

If it is, then turn it off.

Everything else here is spot on. Put text on a higher layer. Make sure it's not coverted to outlines. Make sure there are no strokes on the text.

The Strokes on the text is also a likely candidate - because the Low and Medium Flattner Presets have Convert All Strokes to Outlines. Only the High preset has the Convert All Strokes to Outline turned off.

Hope that helps somehow.

Jeremy_bowmangraphics-DQuh1B

Inspiring

Has some but not all of the text been turned to outlines?

A

Anonymous

Peter - thanks very much for the offer. I will upload the package tomorrow at work (it is about 70MB). I really appreciate this because this problem has plagued me for many months now. I'll PM you when it's uploaded.

Jeremy, the text just looks bolder/thicker. I don't see just outlines.

Jeremy_bowmangraphics-DQuh1B

Inspiring

Yes, it was unlikely, but in my own experience, if I'm focussed on one thing, I find it very easy to overlook something else very obvious. I can easily imagine myself getting more and more focussed on issues such as transparency, text on uppermost layers, etc., and completely overlooking two "obvious" possibilities:

(1) Text that has been converted to outlines (i.e. it consists of vector paths rather than editable text) tends to look a bit heavier in PDFs (to my eyes).

(2) A previous user might have tried to achieve a bold effect by applying a very thin but non-zero stroke to a font that doesn't have its own bold typeface.

Apologies if you are unlike me, and always check the obvious first!

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