Wierd issue with font rendering

Report · Nov 22, 2023

Hi,

I weird problem with fonts in indesign book I created. On my computer everything seems fine, on amazon preview everything seems fine but when I ordered proof print it has unprinted polygons in some places. What can cause it? And how I can fix it before final publishing?

Report · Nov 22, 2023

I can't tell from your post exactly what's going on — although the pictures help, thanks for including those!

KDP print quality is usually good to very good, but first proofs seem to be run on a different system from production copies and I do have some proofs here with evident print faults. I have enough experience across the board to know when a problem is likely just a printing flaw on that copy and when it's something that will be a persistent problem, so I haven't worried about these glitches and have never had production copies from KDP be a problem.

The only think I can think of is that the font for that title is somehow flawed and not reproducing well from KDP's RIP (the system that processes input files to print). Is it a standard commercial font, or something downloaded from a free-font site, or what?

The other cause could be that you've reduced that title layout to outlines, which is a unnecessary process that can cause all kinds of downstream errors. Is that title page set in fonts on the InDesign page? Or is it an imported graphic of some kind? And have you done any kind of font outlining, at the PDF stage or elsewhere?

Report · Nov 22, 2023

Thank you for your response. It is I suppose a pretty standard font (Montserrat Black) but I do not remember where I downloaded it from I think it was Google Fonts, it is also available in adobe fonts so it should not cause problems like this. I had a similar issue with this font with a different print house than Amazon. It was not outlined at any stage.

Report · Nov 22, 2023

Monster-rot. It always seems to be Monster-rot. (But I use it myself, mostly on web sites...)

It may be a mismatch between your library fonts and KDP's, with one of you using the Google version and the other using another. There seem to be several iterations out there, from Google out to cheap free-font versions.

I'd clean out your fonts, download a complete new set of Monster... Montserrat, and do a complete type replacement in your book. Go with the Adobe set if it's accessible to you. It shouldn't take long using the Replace Fonts feature, although you might have to page through to make sure none of the layout is broken. Also, I would NOT subset the fonts when they're collected into the PDF.

And, it's still possible it's just an artifact of KDP's cheap-print workflow. 🙂

Report · Nov 22, 2023

Ok thanks a lot for your help I will try to remove whole font family from my computer and use adobe fonts instead. Hopefully it will help. Thank you once again:)

Report · Nov 27, 2024

I'm not sure if it might be of any help to you, but I've just stumbled on the exact same issue in a totally different technical context.

I have an Adobe AIR application, in which I'm currently replacing the former font with... Montserrat.

Small "holes" appeared in texts at all junctions, mostly of bold characters.

The rendering isn't quite the same in authoring mode (Adobe Animate) and in the final app (the issue is less visible in authoring mode).

Since I have no other option than Montserrat for this project, I had to find a workaround.

Setting the antialiasing mode from "Readability" to "Animation" totally fixes the issue. The latter is a bit more blurry, but the holes totally disappear.

Otherwise, I also have a "Custom Anti-Alias" setting, which allows to set specific values for thickness and sharpness. Positive numbers for thickness will tend to remove the holes, while negative values will make them even bigger.

I'm not sure whether InDesign has such antialias settings, but maybe some other type setting might do the trick?