A

Anonymous

Question

Thick letter L in pdf

Forum|Forum|17 years ago
October 16, 2008
20 replies
123800 views

Hi Again

when i export an indesign file to pdf, any letter L's in the text appear to be very thick and stand out like a sore thumb. is there any reason for this and is it possible to ge rid of this problem.

thanks in advance

Phil

D

dberry77

New Participant

Uncheck "Enchance Thin Lines" in Acrobat preferences and your problem is fixed. It has nothing to do with converting to outlines. You should always convert to outlines unless your pdf is being used internally and you are sure everyone has your fonts. If not, your fonts will be replaced and your formatting can get really screwed up when opened on another machine.

Peter Spier

Community Expert

You should avoid converting text to outlines like the plague. Outlined text loses hinting and becomes less readable, and it is not searchable. Furthermore, InDesign automatically embeds fonts, other than CJK and restricted fonts, when you export, so the correct fonts are always used.

creativeo66219242

New Participant

Always better to use fonts, I work for a printer, they have never printed 'fat' like they look ever - but we do in the real world sometimes still have to outline fonts, especially working with some agencies that won't supply their fonts when printing their projects.

A quick fix viewing solution..you can turn off a setting within Acrobat in the preferences (page display) if it annoys you..turn off enhance thin lines (it sees these glyphs as graphics after outlining, and adds to it) This is just a viewable fix on-screen however, and it will obviously, stop enhancing thin lines too. Nice tip about the 'adding anchor points' though!

Willi Adelberger

Community Expert

If an agency does not supply fonts, use PDF.

creativeo66219242

New Participant

Yeah thanks..nothings quite that simple though.

T

taschig

New Participant

This fix worked for us today (after much frustration!)

To fix bolded 'I's and 'i's in PDFs:

1. Open PDF in Illustrator

2. Select all objects/text

3. Under the 'Objects' menu select 'Flatten Transparency'

4. Select 'Medium Resolution' from the dropdown menu

5. Make sure to check the 'Convert All Text to Outlines' box is selected! Hit OK.

6. Save PDF as normal

Hope this helps someone!

Willi Adelberger

Community Expert

taschig schrieb:

This fix worked for us today (after much frustration!)

To fix bolded 'I's and 'i's in PDFs:

1. Open PDF in Illustrator

2. Select all objects/text

3. Under the 'Objects' menu select 'Flatten Transparency'

4. Select 'Medium Resolution' from the dropdown menu

5. Make sure to check the 'Convert All Text to Outlines' box is selected! Hit OK.

6. Save PDF as normal

Hope this helps someone!

why are you writng such terrible, file destroying nonsense. Nobody should follow your advice. Illustrator is not a common PDF editor. You will destroy the appearance only by opening the file in Illustrator. Don't do that,!!!

‌

Dov Isaacs

Brainiac

Wilhelm Georg Adelberger wrote:

taschig schrieb:

This fix worked for us today (after much frustration!)

To fix bolded 'I's and 'i's in PDFs:

1. Open PDF in Illustrator

2. Select all objects/text

3. Under the 'Objects' menu select 'Flatten Transparency'

4. Select 'Medium Resolution' from the dropdown menu

5. Make sure to check the 'Convert All Text to Outlines' box is selected! Hit OK.

6. Save PDF as normal

Hope this helps someone!

why are you writng such terrible, file destroying nonsense. Nobody should follow your advice. Illustrator is not a common PDF editor. You will destroy the appearance only by opening the file in Illustrator. Don't do that,!!!

+1 and amen! That is the worst advice I've seen in a long time. Adobe certainly does not endorse this in any way, shape, or form. It likely will do more damage than good!

- Dov

- Dov Isaacs, former Adobe Principal Scientist (April 30, 1990 - May 30, 2021)

G

G_ery

New Participant

GUYS, it is really simple!!! (Thanks to the guy who said you need more anchors I found this silly simple solution in CS5.)

1 - After you convert to outlines.

2 - (Ctrl+A) Select all.

3 - Object > Path > Add anchors

SOLVED!

P. S

I accept beers too

Willi Adelberger

Community Expert

G_ery schrieb:

GUYS, it is really simple!!! (Thanks to the guy who said you need more anchors I found this silly simple solution in CS5.)

1 - After you convert to outlines.

2 - (Ctrl+A) Select all.

3 - Object > Path > Add anchors

SOLVED!

P. S

I accept beers too

Nonsens, it is very simple if you don't outline fonts. Why should you do so?

And the command you are recommending is a command from Illustrator, not from InDesign. That would mean that someone has to open an InDesign PDF in Illustrator. Such a recommendation is wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Only PDF and EPS files created in Illustrator with editing capacities can be opened in Illustrator without destroying them. No InDesign PDFs should be opened in Illustrator.

I think you have accepted to many beers before you have written this text, otherwise I cannot imagine how you could get this idea.

G

G_ery

New Participant

First, because our printer requires everything to be outlined and they have a clear policy of no embedded fonts.

Second, of course I am talking about illustrator and PDFs created from illustrator (from the original .ai ) i don't see what is wrong about it. No need to use ID in my case.

Third, this nonsense as you call it has solved my problem with bold ells so I decided to share it so it may be useful to others.

I am not a graphic designer and was happy to share something that can solve a problem. I don't want to brag about some embed vs non-embed or fonts vs outlines.

I was really not expecting such a response.

M

markh77187

New Participant

it seems there is still a lot of discussion going here despite the question being answered earlier on. The issue is simply down to Acrobats settings:

Acrobat's Preferences > Page Display > Rendering > "enhance thin lines" turn this off and the problem is solved. Nothing to do with font choices, outlining or not - it's just that Acrobat's setting makes it look like crap. Simple and easy fix that does'nt mean having to change your workflow.

S

shelleydove

New Participant

Thank you! I'll try it!

perfectpuree

New Participant

SOLUTION!

If you are working in Illustrator all you need to do is take the "Add anchor point tool" and add an extra point on the sides of the I's and L's and probably periods too. See screenshot below. When you save as PDF and view in acrobat the thick lines will now be gone. This is not an easy fix if you have a lot of text, but it works none the less.

Willi Adelberger

Community Expert

Better solution: Don't convert text to outlines!

Dov Isaacs

Brainiac

+1

Amen!

If there was a feature of Adobe software that I would revoke if I could, it would be outlining text. If you review these forums, many, many more problems have been caused by using this technique than any imagined problems of those demanding it have been resolved!

- Dov

- Dov Isaacs, former Adobe Principal Scientist (April 30, 1990 - May 30, 2021)

A

Anonymous

Hi everyone - I've doscovered a solution. I hope it works for other people as well. (As it was happening to me a hell of a lot)

I am using InDesign CS3 btw.

Instead of selecting the "print" to PDF option from the file menu - select the "Export" option - then export the document to PDF and the rendering issue should disappear entirely.

It really was that simple - no rasterizing, no create outlines or not creating outlines - no issues between copying and pasting text from other sources - just export the document rather than selecting to print the document.

S

sssuuusssaaannn

Known Participant

I often get that thick letter 'l' and I always export...it doesn't print out

that way, though.

Dov Isaacs

Brainiac

Nice summary, Mattw0023. I've been horrified by this problem in PDFs for many years, and I've sought solutions (or at least explanations) now and then, without success. But this thread (and a few of its links) certainly nails it.

Even though savvy PDF creators now know how to eliminate the problem (albeit sometimes with font editing or unacceptably tedious hand editing), and even though savvy PDF readers now know to turn off Enhance thin lines, it's utterly amazing to me that the Acrobat team hasn't fixed this problem. The problem again came to my attention most grotesquely this morning when I received my PDF of the 2013 February issue of Scientific American. There are several pages right at the beginning which are peppered with dozens of gigantic sans-serif ones and lower-case els, so much so that the whole page looks like a cruel joke on the publisher.

The same issue also displays tons of examples of jagged baselines, especially with one of their main fonts (BrunelDeck Bold, 10pt.) which looks terrible well into high magnifications.

Clearly, Scientific American would be shocked to see how bad their PDF magazine looks to many of their customers, and I'm sure somebody at Adobe would be equally chagrinned to see how just a tiny bit of ignorance on the part of legions of end-users, or just a tiny bit of ignorance on the part of numerous respected publishers, is producing such a clunky unprofessional result. We may speculate on why the magazine hasn't managed to eliminate the problem, but ultimately (and rightfully) it all reflects on Acrobat, which is a shame, since it's the only near-universal page display format we have. The fact that this problem has been around, unfixed, for many years just makes the whole situation more astonishing.

ashtangakasha,

You seem to imply that this is a problem that Adobe can resolve? Given the quite old thread that you re-opened fairly well sums up the issues as really issues of font design, outlining, etc., none of which are under the control of Acrobat/Reader, what do you suggest Adobe do to “fix” this problem?

- Dov

- Dov Isaacs, former Adobe Principal Scientist (April 30, 1990 - May 30, 2021)

A

Anonymous

Hi all.

I stumbled upon this problem at work about 5 months ago as well. After days of troubleshooting & searching on the internet, I found the cause & a fix to the problem on this page:
http://www.underconsideration.com/speakup/archives/004301.html

This is a rendering bug with Adobe Acrobat/Reader. It only display it as a thicker stroke but it prints fine. If you open the same file on a Mac via the "Preview" application, the problem goes away.

By turning OFF "Enhance thin lines" in Adobe Reader's preference, you can eliminate the display problem. But since the files I was working on will be distributed to thousands of people over the internet, this was not an option for me.

If you have Illustrator, the solution would be to add a point to the vertical strokes of all the lowercase "i" & "l". It's a pain & can be time consuming but it works.

Hope this helps.

NickLW

Participating Frequently

Thanks Ellam for that advice.

But what I can't understand is - this problem with the thick Ls has been around for ages - years I reckon. What are the developers doing? We've all paid for these expensive updates year in, year out - and still the problem hasn't been fixed. In that time how many thousands of designers must have had to apologise to their clients and explain that the Ls are not supposed to be bold - its just a strange thing that Acrobat/Adobe Reader does?

And, as you say, its not a problem using Preview on the Mac - so its obviously a fixable problem!

The thing is, these days, pdfs aren't just a means to an end - in many cases they are the end product. So they need to look right at any scale - not just 800%!

Just one more thing before I finish my rant: I'm wary of creating pdfs using embedded fonts because years ago I used to do that only to discover that sometimes a different font would display on another PC/Mac. Admittedly I was creating pdfs from Freehand MX 2004. Do you know if embedding in CS4 Illustrator & InDesign is now totally, totally reliable?

Cheers

Nick

Kenneth C. Benson

Inspiring

Please don't change the subject line in the thread. Makes it impossible to follow by email.

But what I can't understand is - this problem with the thick Ls has been around for ages - years I reckon. What are the developers doing? We've all paid for these expensive updates year in, year out - and still the problem hasn't been fixed. In that time how many thousands of designers must have had to apologise to their clients and explain that the Ls are not supposed to be bold - its just a strange thing that Acrobat/Adobe Reader does?

Only those "thousands of designers" who outline their text.

Fact is, this is not a problem with thick Ls. It's a problem with thick *drawings* of Ls. If you outline your type, a lot of ugly things happen. The worst offenders are in the area of rendering for electronic display.

Stop outlining. Start embedding. I've seen font substitution problems in PDFs, but none in the last 10 years. Check proofs before printing. About 1996, a client of mine decided that everything had been working so well she could stop looking at bluelines before signing off on them. She got 20,000 copies of a book printed in all italic (except for the italic text, which printed in roman).

Ken

T

Thomas Phinney

Inspiring

This problem occurs only when ALL of the following things are true:

- the font was converted to outlines

- the glyphs in question were drawn simple rectangles with no additional points. In a sans serif font often the lowercase el and sometimes the numeral one can be drawn this way.

Seeing a problem may also require that in Acrobat's Preferences > Page Display > Rendering, "enhance thin lines" is on. But I'm not certain of that one.

The font being "designed for viewing on screen" or the like will NOT help, except insofar as that design involves more complex shapes for the el and one.

Regards,

T

michaelt48575896

New Participant

This worked for me. Thank you so much.

A

Allen Cobb

Inspiring

Alternatively, use Preferences to tell Acrobat not to mess with thin lines.

Allen

_

_Carole_G__Saylor_

New Participant

That's interesting. I can try a few tests and let you know. Thanks for the suggestion. Helvetica is our most frequently used font for figures. We may have to re-think that if what you're saying is true.

Carole

A

Anonymous

That's my personal view. The best thing you can do is to try it and see if it makes a difference for you. I'd be
interested to know.

I have come to accept thickened vertical strokes in PDFs as inevitable at low magnification, particularly with sans
fonts. If you think about how few pixels you have available to render the shape of a character, even with hinting and
anti-aliasing, it becomes clear that something's got to give. So fonts that have been designed expressly for viewing on
computer monitors seem likely to have some advantage.

k

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