Fiery missing font issue

[SoggyWinter]

I have a customer supplied amalgamation of PDF pages is ripping and printing incorrectly with two Fiery boxes running FS150 and FS250. The file preflights in Acrobat without error when checking for PDF syntax, and in Pitstop with the action "Preflight only needed elements".

See attached sample page and scan after printing.

Converting fonts to outlines seems to be a viable workaround.

Fiery Preflight shows fonts that are not rendering as missing, in the case of the attached sample page, Arial. Why would a PDF display and preflight in Acrobat and Pitstop, but have a Fiery RIP not render it correctly?

The full document is too big to upload here, but I can put link it and provide additional diagnostics if needed.

thanks!

 

[Magnus59]

The font in the page you attached is not embedded.
I suspect that the font is embedded in other pages within the amalgamated document, but not in this page (which was created in MS Word)
As the font is embedded in the document (but not in the page), the font is not being flagged as not embedded during preflight.

 

[Dov Isaacs]

There are many preflight profiles in both Acrobat Preflight as well as Pitstop, but neither of the profiles you chose checked for unembedded fonts. That is the problem with your PDF file. It references fonts that are not actually embedded in the PDF file, in this case members of the Arial family. Whoever created the PDF file you attached (in this case using Acrobat in combination with Microsoft Word) did not select options to embed all fonts.

Assuming that you do not have access to the source files, using a preflight profile to “convert fonts to outlines” is a lossy solution. The pages will not render with the same quality as if the fonts are actually embedded in the PDF file. My strongest recommendation is to run the Acrobat preflight fixup (you don't need Pitstop for this) to embed missing fonts. If the missing fonts are in the Arial family, they should already be installed on your system and preflight should have access to them.

@Magnus59, fonts that are embedded in a PDF file are normally embedded for the entire PDF file and software, such as Acrobat, that allow page extraction will properly include the embedded fonts from wherever they might occur in the PDF file!

- Dov

 

[abc]

Typically an Action List in PitStop is for a specific task. A preflight profile would be a better choice for file checking, you can modify an existing one if you don't want all the checks.
The GWG ones provide a good reference if you have doubts, the Digital Print ones would be worth checking out.

 

[MacTwidget]

@Magnus59, fonts that are embedded in a PDF file are normally embedded for the entire PDF file and software, such as Acrobat, that allow page extraction will properly include the embedded fonts from wherever they might occur in the PDF file!

- Dov

This is true, but the OP states that the PDF was amalgamated. Probably PDFs from several sources. That would explain why they are embedded on some pages and not on others.

 

[Dov Isaacs]

This is true, but the OP states that the PDF was amalgamated. Probably PDFs from several sources. That would explain why they are embedded on some pages and not on others.

Depends what you mean by “amalgamated.” Any tool worth its license would correctly handle combining PDF files which are inconsistent with whether they were created with their fonts embedded or not. That being the case, it would behoove the OP, @SoggyWinter to run the appropriate Preflight profiles for checking for unembedded fonts. A PDF syntax check does not check for unembedded fonts because that is absolutely not a syntax issue. Then run the Preflight profile to embed missing fonts.

- Dov

 

[bcr]

So this looks like a classic example of "problem files" when printing legal documents, which I touched upon in my thread here:

https://printplanet.com/threads/suggestions-on-preflight-for-problem-documents-legal-repro.293387/

I will give embedding missing fonts a try next time. Usually I opt to print as image for any such files the fiery spits back out.