Text Appearing Wavy/Distorted in InDesign and Exported Files

[amelia5E27]

Very simple indesign page. Text is looking wavy/distorted? Also when exported. Any ideas? 

top is example of font at MyFonts, bottom in Indesign file. Second photo is exported jpeg. 

I'm not imagining this, right?

<Title renamed by MOD>

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

What's the resolution of the exported JPEG — about how many pixels high are those letters?

Some fonts just don't scale down to middling pixel-based resolution very well, typically older/classic faces designed for solid type. (That's the main reason for most of the "modern" faces in common use  — they were designed for digital reproduction and don't get the wobbles and shivers when pixelated in an image or on screen.)

[amelia5E27]

ok! I tried to make a way bigger document (2000px wide vs 600px wide) and the issue is gone!! Thank you!

[leo.r]

I guess you're referring to the slight differences in some letter heights (notably, D and C in the screenshots below).

I don't have an explanation, but I wonder if this distortion occurs only at certain font sizes? For example, when you exceed a certain size?

(JPEG pixelation is a different issue addressed by @James Gifford—NitroPress ).

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

My thought is that it's one and the same — at a small pixel height, the letter sizes might vary with the pixilation and aliasing.

[amelia5E27]

I tried making the document size bigger (2000px wide vs 600px wide) and the issure resolved itself! I guess it just needs to be a bigger document size?

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

More specifically, you have to give the export/rasterizing process enough pixels to work with. Trying to replicate the very precise curves of type at a low resolution means you'll get fuzzy letters or, as in your case, ones that kind of wobble around as the various conversion rules try to do their best.

Just curious, is there a specific reason you're exporting this to a raster format? It's best to avoid that any time you can, and use a vector-based export like PDF for print or further conversion/processing. That maintains detail, especially for type, to more or less an infinite degree.

[amelia5E27]

I am completely self-taught and just making some jpeg headers/hero images with type/pre-edited photos/png logos for marketing materials (my newsletter and website mostly). I dont think I can upload pdf's. I am now wondering if maybe photoshop would be better? I also do multiple page wholesale/custom ordering pdf's which is why I started with InDesign, and then just began doing simple page ones because I knew the program best/didnt need the photoshop bells and whistles. 

[Willi Adelberger]

If you need a raster format, I recommend to export as PDF/X-4, then open this in Photoshop and save or export it from there as this willresult in a better quality than the direct export.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

No worries — many of us are self-taught. The trick is to know where to find the tutorial info (== Adobe online help, to start) and when to ask for help. Seems like you have that mastered. 🙂

Yes, if these are for online you're doing the right thing by exporting to JPEG. However, InDesign's export for web use isn't very good, and the best practice is to export to a large image, then resize it using Photoshop. That will get around the pixel-scaling issues you've encountered here with type, and let the best tool for the job optimize the image file for web use, smoothing things like type curves when it reduces them.

Work to 2X or 4X your final banner/header size. Don't use the pixel rulers for this; you have to figure out what inch size combined with what export to 300ppi gets you that mulitiple of your final. Then open the export in PS, tweak it in any way you like, and save as your final banner size. You might want to export with the various sharpen/blur/nearest options on export to get optimal results.

And it's best not to use text that will be small in the final result — start with 20-24 pixel height as a minimum — because in the end, you'll still have that "too few pixels to create smooth letters" problem. Use web fonts to put small text over images and headers if you have to.