Make text perfectly centered

Nathan -- The upshot of what Uwe and Rob pointed out is that you can get close, but you'll never get there entirely. You'll always end up having to adjust text manually to centre it optically. It's virtually impossible to set headlines and poetry automatically, there's always something to adjust.

I can recommend this title: "Finer points in the spacing & arrangement of type" (Geoffrey Dowding). After reading this wonderful book you'll be convinced that you can automate to a certain extent, but manual intervention is always needed.

P.

Two layout windows where on the right the text frame is selected and moved.

On the left you see the immediate result without optical distraction:

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

Hi Nathan,

something you could explore:

"Hand tweaking" the center position of the characters with e.g. setting the paragraph to right aligned and adding a small rectangle anchored behind the last character. Select the anchored frame and change its width with the Transform panel's input field for percentages for subtle movements using the keyboard arrow keys:

The selected anchored rectangle gives you nearly no distraction.

But if this still distracts you, open a new layout window for the same document and spread and change the view there. In one layout window you do the manipulation of the width, either using a rectangle like the one in my screenshot above or an insertion point for changing kerning values, the other layout window is showing the bare result without guides and stuff.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

Hi @Nathan22148242akgt , Also, a font’s characters have side bearings, so the amount of side bearing space to the left of a capital N would vary from font to font.

You could add a space before the first character, adjust the space’s tracking and customize the alignment of the text to the frame edge, but I think you would have to vary the amount for each character combination:

Also, the amount of Optical Margin Alignment applied to the text frame has some affect:

And, even though I‘ve metrically aligned the N and the 6 to the frame edges, optically it looks like there is more space to the right of the 6 because of the character’s shape:

Thanks for your help, both of you.

I was hoping there would be an auto- fix as I have several hundred of these to do! It looks like the Proportional Lining tip will solve most of them, but I'll just manually center the one's which look off.

+1 for everything Uwe says.

But also the fact is to get text that looks perfectly centred you have to eyeball it. You can't just go by the numbers. Because the shapes of the numbers (or letters) require optical adjustment.

For instance, if you're setting the number 41, even if you've got exactly the same distance left and right by the numbers, the number will appear to be too far right, because the point of the 4 is visually week, so the whole thing would need to be skewed a little to the left to look visually centred.

Ariel

Hi Nathan,

if you always want to do the alignment with the outer shape forms of the glyphs, you have to convert them to outlines and center the result. With editable type there is no "one-size-fits-all" OpenType feature for this, I think.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

Also see into:

https://www.typotheque.com/fonts/choosing_numerals

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

Hi Nathan,

depending if the OpenType feature is available with your font you could try to use Proportional Lining for Digits.

From my German InDesign where this OpenType feature is named "Proportionale Versalziffern". In a French UI this should be "Chiffres alignés proportionnels", with a Spanish UI this should be "Cifras proporcionales alineadas":

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )