Global font change in a PDF

[xtant64]

Hello all,

I have a weird question, one that I don't really thing has an answer beyond what I already have. Let me know if this doesn't seem very clear:
1. We create a merged PDF. This PDF is a combination of a cover/back cover created in InDesign with guts that are created in Word by another (not design oriented) area.
2. We send the PDF to an outside printer to be produced in a larger book.
3. We are getting errors back from them during preflight. One we have currently is that there is a "artificial bold" on font SymbolMT (not sure of the exact term).

I know this is only in the Word document since we do not use that font in the area we create, and our designers are not clicking a Bold button in InDesign. Plus I found in the text where they use it, and it is in multiple areas. It is not possible for us to get the Word file currently, and I'm wondering if there is a way to change the font throughout the PDF using Adobe Acrobat Pro. I know we can use the Text Touch Up tool, but it would take a day or 2 to change it this way. I don't have access to PitStop or anything similar, so that is out of the question also.

Since we keep merging these Word Docs., we have been having issues prop up constantly on these. It's never the same, and stuff like this I have a feeling would print fine, but I would LOVE if I could just give the outside area a script to run their files through to clean them up before we get them, but I don't know what/or how. My prepress knowledge is a little rusty anymore.

Thanks for any help in advance!

 

[mattbeals]

You can use an action list in Enfocus PitStop or a fixup in callas pdfToolbox. But I don't know that you are going to get rid of the artificial style. I suspect you will, but I don't know.

Personally I wouldn't have too much of an issue with artificial styles. Is it bad? Not really. Is it good? No, but it really isn't that bad.

 

[Al Ferrari]

@mattbeals: The original poster already stated:

"I know we can use the Text Touch Up tool, but it would take a day or 2 to change it this way. I don't have access to PitStop or anything similar, so that is out of the question also."

 

[mattbeals]

Yup, he did. Those are the two ways I know of outside of recomposing the pages. And that wasn't an option either.

 

[pajdzn]

I have found it bad to merge documents from different sources, usually resulting in font issues. I usually keep the files separate, name them in a consecutive fashion so they fall in order and run them that way. Acrobat likes to clean up the fonts and minimize them which is a problem when the files may contain the same font names but from different vendors or types, ie. postscript, truetype and opentype.

 

[airyk]

You could save the Word doc as a pdf and then outline the fonts in that pdf and then merge it in place of the other pdf.

 

[rich apollo]

This is a really good opportunity for you to pick up PitStop, or another editing tool. What does your department cost per hour? How many hours will it take to remedy this situation with the tools you have at hand? That is what this will cost your company EACH TIME you receive one of these documents. I think you'll find the ROI (return on investment) for PitStop, or another similar tool, will be one, maybe two, jobs for this client. That should be very easy to justify.

 

[xtant64]

Airyk, I'm curious as to how to accomplish this using Acrobat Pro 9. I've seen tutorials online as to add a watermark, then delete it to do this, but that seems odd to be the only option.

As for PitStop, since we are an in-house marketing department for a larger corporation, we will not buy it. I hate to be that abrupt about it, but we are not able to justify the cost for a print production tool on our end. Don't get me wrong, I loved PitStop and all of the other tools I used to use (I believe Quite a Box of Tricks was in there also), but this could be solved if we could have a more direct line of communication with the printer I believe. Besides, I have a feeling there is a solution to this that does not involve running the PDF through PitStop. This is a new isolated problem also. It seems that the printer is only having an issue with these files after we combine them with our covers.

What is really odd, is we have been doing this for the last year or so with out any problems, and now since we upgraded our Macs a few months back, it seems to be cropping up. I'm worried it is an issue with CS5 or something along those lines, but I don't have enough direct access to the printer to really troubleshoot/solve it. I'm going to try to find a CSR to talk to about this to see if our settings are causing it now.

Thanks all!

 

[airyk]

Sorry, I should have mentioned using Pitstop after making it into a PDF

 

[Joe]

Hello all,

I have a weird question, one that I don't really thing has an answer beyond what I already have. Let me know if this doesn't seem very clear:
1. We create a merged PDF. This PDF is a combination of a cover/back cover created in InDesign with guts that are created in Word by another (not design oriented) area.
2. We send the PDF to an outside printer to be produced in a larger book.
3. We are getting errors back from them during preflight. One we have currently is that there is a "artificial bold" on font SymbolMT (not sure of the exact term).

I know this is only in the Word document since we do not use that font in the area we create, and our designers are not clicking a Bold button in InDesign. Plus I found in the text where they use it, and it is in multiple areas. It is not possible for us to get the Word file currently, and I'm wondering if there is a way to change the font throughout the PDF using Adobe Acrobat Pro. I know we can use the Text Touch Up tool, but it would take a day or 2 to change it this way. I don't have access to PitStop or anything similar, so that is out of the question also.

Since we keep merging these Word Docs., we have been having issues prop up constantly on these. It's never the same, and stuff like this I have a feeling would print fine, but I would LOVE if I could just give the outside area a script to run their files through to clean them up before we get them, but I don't know what/or how. My prepress knowledge is a little rusty anymore.

Thanks for any help in advance!

Not possible in Acrobat without a tool like Pitstop but even that isn't going to fix the "artificial bold" problem. You need to go to the source and tell them to stop using Word styling and only use the available fonts, for example, SymbolMT BOLD instead of SymbolMT with faux bold. Even better, have them use a real page layout application instead of a word processing program.

 

[Paul_Richards_1985]

Before having pitstop I used to get around this problem using indesign (it wouldn't work all the time though unfortunately). I would import all pages (multipage script is useful). Then create a flattener transparency preset that as convert all text to outlines ticked. Then export another pdf.

Only problem with that is if it does work you are going to struggle if you need to make any text amends. You would then have to edit the original pdf then repeat that process. Pitstop is well worth the money.

 

[leonardr]

I have found it bad to merge documents from different sources, usually resulting in font issues.

Can you please provide DETAILED information about what types of errors? What tools you used to produce such problematic documents? How the documents were printed (software, RIP, hardware, etc).

What you have said above is an "old wives tale". It is based on information and/or experience that is over a DECADE old and not relevant in the modern world. So please either demonstrate that such issues do exist using modern/current tooling _OR_ please stop spreading falsehoods...

 

[pcmodem]

By chance. Would the combined PDF happened to be performed on a OS X 10.6.7 computer? Perhaps the font fix from Apple needs to be installed.

 

[xtant64]

By chance. Would the combined PDF happened to be performed on a OS X 10.6.7 computer? Perhaps the font fix from Apple needs to be installed.

Yes, it actually is. I thought the font fix was set to install with automatic updates? How can I verify that this was installed on all of our machines? I'm pretty sure it is a direct effect of them using artificial bold styling, but I haven't run into that issue in close to 5 years from any printer I've dealt with. At least none that worried about it not producing correctly. We want them to use the correct styling (example: TahomaBold instead of Tahoma with bold styling), but they have several fonts that do not come in Italic or Bold. Also, since these are government created/mandated documents, we are not able to ask them to create them in InDesign or Quark. Basically we get what we get.

I love to tell people "garbage in, garbage out", but people love to tell you that is unacceptable and find your replacement with the quickness.

On a side note, thanks for any help!