Acrobat 8 - Convert All Text to Outlines NOT WORKING

[jbbbarr]

Joe you are soooo right they all live in that ivory tower where all files are correct. Obviously NO ONE has worked in a real press production environment, and no Leonard a lab does not count.

It infuriates me with the pompus, retarded remarks that Leonard gives about how things should be done, who gives a shit about the archival copy when a $500/hr+ press is sitting idle waiting for one of us to do it by the book. Adobe has had their collective head up their ass for quite some time, do you really think any of these complaints get any consideration.

You would think that they could have at least come up with something comparable to Neo or Pitstop for that matter. Must be too focused on Web crap, definitely not prepress for quite some time.

But Joe the new UI is probably just trying be be green, that's why we have to click twice or more, kind of like living in the Emerald city. So let's just tell our bosses that it is best to do things by the adobe playbook. I'll meet up with you at the unemployment line after doing so.

 

[Lukas Engqvist]

I often wrestel with answering what people ask. Often a question is asked can it be done, when the real question is will you do it and take responsibility that it will turn out just the way I want it. Often the files we spend most of the time fixing are those that were not done correct in the first place.
It seems you are aking for a blessing that will free you of the resposibilities of the consequences, which leonard is stating are the reason that outlining will not be blessed as the correct way to solve all font issues. I have found Adobe responsive, there are things on my wish list I have not seen, but if we are to be constructive we have to eplain and motivate our requests. Opening up and acrobat 4 every now and again mght be good to see where we came from, sure there is room for improvement. But nowdays if you can jusggle a PDF the printing industry is your oyster, one file format to know inside out!

 

[Prepress_Parasite]

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?

Better editing tools would be a big step up for Acrobat.

 

[leonardr]

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.

Interesting - you are the first person who has actually said that the UI of Acrobat 8 was WORSE than previous version. Ever other users we've talked to, and every published review, said exactly the opposite. It's why we tried to make very minor changes with 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.

So the problem really is one of "philosophy". We have moved Acrobat with v8 and continuing with v9 to be "document focused" rather than "environment focused". You may not know this - but each document can have it's own unique set of toolbars open (that's why they are in the document window and not "shared")

Apparently, however, the type of work (or style of work) that you do - this isn't beneficial. So noted! Thanks!

 

[leonardr]

Joe you are soooo right they all live in that ivory tower where all files are correct. Obviously NO ONE has worked in a real press production environment, and no Leonard a lab does not count.

While I grant you that myself and my team that are responsible for the prepress/print production features of Acrobat don't have ink on our hands - that doesn't mean that we don't understand the needs of users through LOTS of face to face discussions, reading forums, etc. Why do you think I spend my time reading & responding on places like this?!?!?

You would think that they could have at least come up with something comparable to Neo or Pitstop for that matter. Must be too focused on Web crap, definitely not prepress for quite some time.

Excuse me?!! Acrobat 9 has more features related to prepress & print production that any version of Acrobat since 5.0! My team and I invested a LOT of time and energy into delivering a product that addressed what we believed were the top "pain points" expressed by the many users in the industry that we talked to during our investigatory phase. New features like the Object Inspector! MAJOR improvements in color management. MAJOR improvements in Preflight - both checks and fixes. MAJOR support for Standards such as PDF/X. and much more!

As far as "coming up with something comparable to Neo or Pitstop" - what does that mean, exactly? What features of those products are you using that aren't present in Acrobat today that you would like? What problems do you have on a daily basis that you use those tools to solve? Help me to understand what the problems are... (even if I am, according to you, a retarded idiot)

Leonard

 

[Purple Cat]

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

Sorry, have to disagree with that. When rendering PDF files you're either using the fonts on your system (in which case hinting is available) or embedded fonts (in which case hinting is available).

Kind regards,
David.

 

[Joe]

Interesting - you are the first person who has actually said that the UI of Acrobat 8 was WORSE than previous version. Ever other users we've talked to, and every published review, said exactly the opposite. It's why we tried to make very minor changes with Acrobat 9...




So the problem really is one of "philosophy". We have moved Acrobat with v8 and continuing with v9 to be "document focused" rather than "environment focused". You may not know this - but each document can have it's own unique set of toolbars open (that's why they are in the document window and not "shared")

Apparently, however, the type of work (or style of work) that you do - this isn't beneficial. So noted! Thanks!

The "appearance" of Acrobat 8 & 9 is fine. It's pretty. It's the usability that is horrible. Practically every object in it takes one click to get the focus and then another click to use it. It's maddening when trying to view the separations in a PDF file. If I'm trying to navigate through a PDF with 100's of pages in it I turn the black separation off/on for every single page. In versions previous to Acrobat 8 I could keep one hand on the mouse and the other on the keyboard arrow keys. I could hit the right arrow key to move to the next page while clicking on and off the black separation. I could get through a huge amount of pages in a short while. Along comes Acrobat 8 and this no longer works. To use the arrow key/mouse combination I now have to open separation preview. Once I do that the arrow keys don't work unless I click the document window somewhere. To turn off the black separation I now have to click the separation window to give it the focus and then click the box to turn the separation off. Go to the next page? Right arrow does not work again unless I click the document window! ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!! If you have not heard these complaints before you have not been listening.

And no, I do not like the toolbar on every document. Some of my jobs come in with a single PDF for every page (don't ask). Opening more than a scant few brings Acrobat to a crawl (waste of resources to create 12 toolbars for 12 separate pages). I suppose I can see a slight advatangeg for some people to have a different toolbar for each document. I'm not one of them though and would love the option to turn off the "document focused" and turn on the "environment focused" toolbars.

 

[Purple Cat]

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.

I can answer that one. I asked why people wanted to outline fonts in PDF years ago on the Enfocus user group. I got several very good answers so we scheduled the feature to go into the next major update of PitStop Professional.

That being said: use with care. Realize that you do sacrifice quality when you do this (specifically hinting information) and that you should not make outlining type a general practice.

Also, there is another truth in what Leonard said. In many cases the reasons I heard where to fix problems on the spot. That's fine, but do realize that software and hardware changes over time. It makes sense to check these band-aid fixes once in a while and to see whether technology hasn't advanced enough so that there is a healthier fix.

Take care,
David.

 

[Lukas Engqvist]

Joe, maybe you should invest time in learning alternate ways to navigate, and Leonard could try and push for a way to toggle black separation, since that is the most common use of the separations pannel even for me.

 

[Joe]

Joe, maybe you should invest time in learning alternate ways to navigate, and Leonard could try and push for a way to toggle black separation, since that is the most common use of the separations pannel even for me.

I have. I can use the scroll wheel on the mouse to move to the next page just by moving the mouse over the document window and scrolling it one click at a time. It's still not as good as the old way but I'll have to live with it, as obviously Adobe isn't going back to the old (better) way. One thing I've learned from software companies over the years is that their aim is to make their product as difficult as possible to use. See Quark. Adobe is headed down the same path. (probably should not have mentioned the scroll wheel, they'll probably remove that functionality from the next update.)

 

[Lukas Engqvist]

LOL - well I believe that my scynicism has met it's match. I don't believe the software companies generally make it more difficult on purpose…*
I thougt it was the certified network nerds that forced tat kind of development to keep their jobs.

 

[leonardr]

Joe, maybe you should invest time in learning alternate ways to navigate, and Leonard could try and push for a way to toggle black separation, since that is the most common use of the separations pannel even for me.

Consider the navigation concerns noted and NOT ignored...

Leonard

 

[Al Ferrari]

In # 20 in this thread you stated "We have moved Acrobat with v8 and continuing with v9 to be "document focused" rather than "environment focused".

If this is what accounts for the need to click twice that Joe describes, perhaps this environment/document application focus can be made into a preference.

Al

 

[Joe]

Consider the navigation concerns noted and NOT ignored...

Leonard

Leonard, if you can get this issue resolved it will be your ticket into the Prepress Hall of Fame.

 

[artpear]

Hello leonardr !!!

Hello leonardr !!!

I am the original poster of this threads that received a lot of feedback, but my questions haven't been answered !!!!!!!

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?

 

[Shawn]

Consider the navigation concerns noted and NOT ignored...

Leonard

Hey Leonard

I know that this thread is getting hijacked, but as long as you're listening How about moving the settings in the Page Setup dialog into the main Print dialog for Acrobat. I'd love to be able to control Paper size, scaling and orientation from the Print dialog.

Just copy the Setup panel from InDesign and be done with it. Having to go to a separate dialog every time I need to change scaling percentage or paper size is annoying. Even Quark got this one right after version 3.

Thanks
Shawn

 

[jbbbarr]

Sorry you took it that way Leonard. I said your comments are retarded, not you. As far as calling you an idiot, not sure where this comes from. I have been following this forum since you were at pdf sages and you used to have a more realistic approach to your answers. Now you just tow the company views without regard to reality.

When I have font embedding issues and the pressman is standing there with the owner customer and whomever else , what's right or wrong. I'll tell you what's right, anything that gets the signoff on the job is , no matter what the proper procedures are. I for one usually open up fontlab studio and allow the font to be embedded if I have the time, this is much faster on big jobs. I want to reiterate who cares about font hinting from pdfs that are generated from non publishing apps. The secretary who produced the pdf is ecstatic that she was able to produce a pdf in the first place.

You also wanted info on what Pitstop and Neo have that you should have incorporated. Global change for one should have been incorporated years ago. Neo's layer functionality is very slick, mind you I only have a day or so messing around with their demo, but it was as intuitive as any page layout program. Manual trapping and image editing were effortless. It seems that acro8 and 9 from what i have seen are not targeted for the prepress environment. I still use 7 for fast accurate seps preview, I simply do not have the time or patience for that nonsense that 8 throws in the mix.

 

[Shawn]

I am the original poster of this threads that received a lot of feedback, but my questions haven't been answered !!!!!!!

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?

Hi Artpear

When a font gets subset during PDF creation the internal name gets changed somewhat to distinguish it from other fonts. So the font you've described is the subset embedded version of California-FB-Regular. The PDF itself is probably fine, but Quark has problems with placing newer versions of PDFs. Quark 6 and 7 would only accept Acrobat 4 PDFs. Any PDF features from Acrobat 5 or later could cause problems, especially if transparency is used anywhere in the PDF file. My guess is that this is a newer version that has some feature in it that Quark doesn't like.

As others have suggested, the best way to handle this problem is to not place PDFs in Quark, instead save them as EPS from within Acrobat and place that. In my experience, this leads to way fewer problems. You may need to tweak your EPS export settings to get the best results from your output device, but once you've got it figured out you can change the default settings in your preferences.

I've heard that this is exactly what the Quark 6 or 7 PDF Import filter does in the background whenever you place a PDF, but Acrobat seems to do a much better job of it. Quark 8 is supposed to do much better with PDF placement, but I haven't done any testing yet to know if this is true.

Shawn

 

[rich apollo]

Sorry, Leonard. I don't want to pile on, but I, and my team, are all nay-sayers about Acrobat's UI in versions 8 and 9. And PitStop's is even worse. This thread has run long enough - I'm gonna' start a new one on this topic.

 

[artpear]

Hi Shawn,

Thanks for the info. How do you generate your EPS out of Acrobat. Will it rasterize the fonts or leave them as is? I tried converting a file but when I import in quark, it gave me the gray page with Postcript Picture !!!!