Acrobat 8 - Convert All Text to Outlines NOT WORKING

[artpear]

Maybe I don't know how to do it but when I try using the Flattener Preview and the PDF Optimizer in Acrobat Pro 8 to convert text to outlines it doesnt converts it !!!!

Can somebody help me PLEASE....

Art

 

[almaink]

Did you add, or is there already, a transparent object on every page in the PDF? If not then it won't convert the fonts to outlines. You can add transparency pretty easily by using a watermark set at 0% opacity. Document/Watermark/add will get you there. Just type a letter make it 0% opacity and then run the optimizer setting the checkbox for convert fonts to outlines.

 

[artpear]

Thanks, I'll try that

 

[artpear]

It works... Great... Thank you !!!!

 

[leonardr]

DO NOT USE THIS FEATURE THIS WAY!

The Transparency Flattener is just that - a way to flatten transparent objects. As such, it will do a variety of things to your PDF in the process of flattening that you may not wish it to do (object recompression, downsampling, etc.) to a non-flattened PDF.

Conversion of text->outlines in late stage is NOT a recommended practice, which is why Adobe Acrobat does not offer the feature.

Leonard Rosenthol
PDF Standards Architect
Adobe Systems

 

[Lukas Engqvist]

Note that converting text to outlines disguards font hinting, a feature to make your font look their best at small font sizes. The feature is there to make sure text is treated consistently if there is part of the text interacting with transparency, consistency at the price of quality.

 

[almaink]

U guys really kill me. I'd give you both 1 hour in a Mom and Pop shop before you would both be shown the door. These days files don't all come from professional designers. In fact I'd say only 10% of what I see anymore does. Many times we are forced to use techniques that may not stand up to Adobe's or anyone else's scrutiny, but simply work, to get the PDF we received, made in God only knows what program, for 75 invites and envelopes for this nice lady with a PC, and no clue about fonts; let alone embedding them, daughters wedding thats gonna start in 4 hours. Leonard, you seem to think we do these type things with our eyes closed. I'm sure any of us, forced to do something "outside the box" is always careful to scrutinize the results carefully, and if a problem is found, fix it or find another way to do it.

 

[rich apollo]

Lukas,
I don't think any of the font hinting is present in a PDF anyway.

Leonard,
Why is converting text to outlines not recommended? This is one of the features I always kind of thought Acrobat should have.

 

[Lammy]

I'm with Almaink on this one. There are more times than not that I need to convert some POS pdf to outlines so when I edit the then exported EPS in illustrator I'm not fighting the fonts. As nice as it is to say that we need to train our customers better, I'm betting the secretary of XYZ company that had to do their brochure because she "knows" how to use Word or Publisher could really care less. All they want to know is that they can email us a file and magically in a few days get their job back in some reasonable resemblance of what they printed off on their $20 ink jet printer. Trust me, they don't even know that fonts give hints

 

[buckeye]

I can't tell you how many times I've used that feature to bail me out of a jam, but I can tell you how many times it has burned me. ZERO!!

 

[artpear]

That's the problem with PDF in my opinion. It's a very good concept but used in WAY too many fields. It has made things simpler for many but at the same times a lot more complicated for us... again, my opinion. I have to say that I'm new at using PDF, I havent even sent a job to press yet... BUT I'M SCARED.
We're a hard cover book and magazine publisher with an in-house prepress and we have been using TIFF-IT for the past 6 years with NO glitch. I'm not scared of the PDFs that I'm gonna generate from our editorial, I have full control. I'm scared because we receive ads from clients from all over the world, from ad agencies but also from mom and pop shop somewhere in the islands that says "Of course I can make a PDF !!!! "
So, yes sometimes we need to find ways around the problem, we don't always have time to go back to our client and try to explain to them how to generate a print-ready PDF....

 

[artpear]

So what do you do when you place a pdf in a quark doc to generate a final PDF and you get a message saying: Some EPS/PDF pictures in this document use screen fonts not available in your system, including: USVCTE+CaliforniaFB-Reg-Identity-H....

What does that mean?

 

[almaink]

artpear, best advice I can give you is don't use Quark for a PDF workflow. Quark is better suited to a postscript workflow meaning eps's. InDesign on the other-hand can work in a pure PDF environment.
You can even trap PDF's using InDesign if you want.

 

[Joe]

U guys really kill me. I'd give you both 1 hour in a Mom and Pop shop before you would both be shown the door. These days files don't all come from professional designers. In fact I'd say only 10% of what I see anymore does. Many times we are forced to use techniques that may not stand up to Adobe's or anyone else's scrutiny, but simply work, to get the PDF we received, made in God only knows what program, for 75 invites and envelopes for this nice lady with a PC, and no clue about fonts; let alone embedding them, daughters wedding thats gonna start in 4 hours. Leonard, you seem to think we do these type things with our eyes closed. I'm sure any of us, forced to do something "outside the box" is always careful to scrutinize the results carefully, and if a problem is found, fix it or find another way to do it.

HITS NAIL ON THE HEAD!

If I only worked the way Adobe recommends I'd never send any jobs to press. Seems like Adobe could use some experience in the real world.

 

[artpear]

almaink, The way i was planning on working it was to print to postscript and then hot folder to Distiller, we dont use InDesign yet !!

 

[almaink]

Just keep a close eye on what you do artpear, Quark has burned me more than once with placed PDF's.
If I'm forced to use Quark and PDF's together I convert all the PDF's to eps's before I place them. Never been burned doing it that way.

 

[jbbbarr]

I have not tried the transparency technique, but if converting text to outlines is so bad, why does Pitstop have this a feature? I use it day in and day out, never burned, on several different rips.

Just because it does not follow some madeup list of not-to-dos, means nothing in the real world.

I am with the other posts, if you don't, cannot or will not break any rule possible to get the job out you will be out of a job.

I supposed in a glass bubble we could all follow the rules...

 

[leonardr]

Trying a different approach

Trying a different approach

I am aware that people HAVE used the technique of converting text to outlines to get themselves "out of a jam"....but I suspect that you chose that solution NOT because it was the right solution BUT because it was a solution that worked ONCE (perhaps years ago) and so you keep doing it.

So please help me understand what the reasons are that you use it today? In other words, I'd rather have our engineers invest in fixing the REAL problems than in creating "band-aids".

Example: Lammy mentioned "so I can edit in Illustrator". That tells me that either Acrobat needs better editing tools (so you don't need Illustrator) OR we need to improve Illustrator's font handling.

What else?

 

[leonardr]

I don't think any of the font hinting is present in a PDF anyway.

It is indeed present in a PDF, because it is so important.

Why is converting text to outlines not recommended?

Lukas hit the first reason - lack of hinting on the font, which is really part of an entire category of "reduced quality text rendering". in addition to losing hinting, you've impacting your stroke weights of the glyphs. It's less noticable on Roman text, but with many non-Roman languages (esp. CJKV & Arabic) it is much more significant.

Second, of course, you can no longer use the same PDF that you sent to press as your "archival master", since you removed any/all searchability on the document. So what do you archive - the version that actual went to press or the one before outlining or both? Now, sure, in a "mom & pop" where you print and toss - it's not an issue. But consider the various printers that do, or in house publications, etc.

Third, as I mentioned in my other message, it's a "band-aid". it doesn't solve any specific problem, but instead is used as a "hammer" when a precision screwdriver would be better.

Leonard

 

[Joe]

I am aware that people HAVE used the technique of converting text to outlines to get themselves "out of a jam"....but I suspect that you chose that solution NOT because it was the right solution BUT because it was a solution that worked ONCE (perhaps years ago) and so you keep doing it.

So please help me understand what the reasons are that you use it today? In other words, I'd rather have our engineers invest in fixing the REAL problems than in creating "band-aids".

Example: Lammy mentioned "so I can edit in Illustrator". That tells me that either Acrobat needs better editing tools (so you don't need Illustrator) OR we need to improve Illustrator's font handling.

What else?

Well, it is my feeling that Adobe does not listen to suggestions or the abominable UI of Acrobat 8 would have never have made it out the door in Acrobat 9. I'll go over it again. It's insane to use a product that you have to click each and every object twice to use it. Want to keep separation preview open and work with multiple PDF's? Click once to give it the focus. Click again to actually turn off a separation. Want to select a tool in the toolbar now? Click once to give the toolbar the focus. Click again to select the tool (if you are lucky it will work in two clicks). Need to go back to separation preview? Click. Click. It's maddening to use in a production environment and has cut my production by at least a third. I've told Adobe about it via every method I can think of. N-O-T-H-I-N-G gets done. Not even a "thanks for your suggestion". Obviously your test user group consisted of a bunch drones that use PDF's to read technical manuals on the best way to alienate their customers.

[/rant]