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afterglow's picture
571 pencils

InDesign Font Outline Question

I'm in the middle of sending a brochure made in InDesign CS2 to the printer. They are reporting issues with fonts so to eliminate any issue I saved a copy with all the fonts turned to outlines. However when I preflight the doc it's telling me these fonts are still present in the Master Pages and in the spaces and returns between paragraphs of now outlined text. How do I get InDesign to either manually embed these fonts or realise that I can't turn a space or return into an outline.

Commenting on this Forum topic is closed.

fidel's picture
332 pencils

Outlining the font, especially with smal point sizes will make your type thicker, so it is best to avoid and solve the problem in another way.

Did you made a pdf or just gave your InDesign document, did you do a package?

some questions must be resolved before we can give an answer

fidel

afterglow's picture
571 pencils

I made a PDF from the Export (Press Quality) option of InDesign. I preflighted the doc and there were no font errors on my end though it was only embedding some of them. I included all the fonts used in an accompanying folder but the printers were just being vague on the errors there were encountering so I will run with outlines as the least worst option in this case, I found a method to get rid of the font instances so hopefully all should be well.

damask's picture
3 pencils

As i understand your question.. hereunder some thoughts throw my experience with InDesign 1.0, 1.5, 2.0 and CS

• when you choose outline type, it will make another copy from your text box as outlined, and keeps the old one as text under. so the fonts problem still active.

• you should be so careful when outlining a text, especially when its have a tables inside.. or some special typographic effects.

• for me i don't prefer to outline the text in any case.. its better to deal with file as every DTP software.. so keep your font in a folder.. and make sure the press guy he copied the fonts to their right place.. such as:

- HD/library/fonts
- HD/users/library/fonts
- HD/applications/InDesign folder/fonts

and finally, if no one of the above note works.. export to PDF.. then open the PDF in Photoshop and save it as Tiff.. the press guys they gonna love that..

Cheeerz

afterglow's picture
571 pencils

Cheers for the replies. I ended up lugging my iMac into the printers and printing directly to their RIP.

fidel's picture
332 pencils

But theirs, shame on them.

llbully's picture
2 pencils

>> • when you choose outline type, it will make another copy from your text box as outlined, and keeps the old one as text under. <<

Is there any solution to this problem besides manually going on and getting rid of the old text that stays under after outlining?

I'm doing 85-page brochures in different languages therefore the fonts MUST be outlined for PDF. I'm having the most problems with the Russian and Taiwanes. If I could just create outlines smoothly the PDF is fine.

All I want to do is outline the fonts for PDF without having to go into every page and manually have to delete the extra text that shows up under after creating outliones the first time. Any suggestions?

llbully's picture
2 pencils

Nevermind I easily answered my own question by just deleting the extra text box that stays behind! Just gets a bit tedious...

schmemmm's picture
2 pencils

I am very late to the party on this question, but I will answer because I have seen on a few sites people saying that its rubbish and basically get another printer/publisher who will support your package and fonts. The printer I deal with is running a Mac only environment and the fonts in our style guide, they do not have licenses for so this is what I do to get around the problem or fonts not embedding correctly.

Go to Indesign and go to the 'type' menu and choose 'find fonts', this will tell you all fonts and their location. So then you can choose to have it automatically replace all problematic fonts (the ones that shouldnt be there with the ones you intended to use) - even the ones in the spaces between paragraphs and words. Change them for the correct ones.

Now if there is one font that will not replace or disappear from the list, I go through the character and paragraph styles and check that I have not accidentally left a problematic font in there.

Following that I export as a PDF for High quality print.

The only problem I have had with this is that occasionally you might have a font that was made in say Adobe Fontographer (early edition) that does not allow for embedding, in that case you would have to choose another font or create outlines.

I don't outline fonts in Indesign unless I have to.

ireid's picture
1283 pencils

That's interesting I have NEVER seen that problem in InDesign CS2. And especially the one comment about 'Outlining makes your font thicker" THAT'S NEVER HAPPENED to me! Strange. Anyhoo Once you outline EVERYTHING, (including the master pages) there should be NO text frames anywhere. And when you save as PDF it SHOULD embed the fonts.

Save your PDF as PDFX-1a. No problems after that! :)

"Try not, Do! or do not, there is no try."
-Yoda

wolfdxb's picture
2 pencils

That was a useful thread, But i have one question though.

How can convert to outline without leaving the text frames behind??. i.e keeping only the outlined text

natobasso's picture
3953 pencils

It's usually text you've applied filters to that leaves the box around it. You can always select it with your white arrow tool and hit 'delete' to remove.

----
Powerpoint is not a design application
My latest web design work

wolfdxb's picture
2 pencils

Thanks for your reply.

Yeah Actually I do that, but I was wondering id there is an option where we can turn it off. To convert to outlines without leaving the original font text just like in Illustrator.

natobasso's picture
3953 pencils

If you use filters I believe the box is there as an artifact of the outlining process.

----
Powerpoint is not a design application
My latest web design work

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