PDFs from client

[rande]

Why would a clients proof show a different font then what I'm seeing in Acrobat pro? They show a reg font and mine is condensed?

 

[Visualaid]

Why would a clients proof show a different font then what I'm seeing in Acrobat pro? They show a reg font and mine is condensed?

they didn't embed fonts. cmd+d to show fonts, see the list, embedded, not embedded?
see if you can activate the font that's not embedded.

 

[Lammy]

OR the font they are using has licensing restrictions and will not allow it to embed. There is no system in Acrobat to warn you when you are view a file and it has substituted fonts for display. Remember when this all started, this was one of those big advantages of a PDF, then end user didn't have to have the fonts because the PDF would have embedded replacement fonts (adobe sans, adobe serif) to use if needed.

 

[Visualaid]

here's what i'd do..
take that pdf from the client and open and flatten and resave it in photoshop.

 

[DCurry]

here's what i'd do..
take that pdf from the client and open and flatten and resave it in photoshop.

Sure, if you like fuzzy rasterized type instead of nice, crisp vectors. Besides, if the fonts aren't embedded in the PDF then it still won't look right.

 

[Visualaid]

Sure, if you like fuzzy rasterized type instead of nice, crisp vectors. Besides, if the fonts aren't embedded in the PDF then it still won't look right.

hmm not sure what youre doing to get fuzzy type; works for me.

 

[DCurry]

It's not anything I'm "doing" - it's the nature of the beast when taking vector art, which is resolution-independent, and rasterizing which makes it resolution-dependent. The fuzziness comes from anti-aliasing.

You can mitigate it a bit by rasterizing at a higher DPI, and most people would probably never notice, but if you look at your ripped files you'll see the difference quite clearly.

Forcing PDFs to open in Photoshop is a hack move, and IMHO is only to be done as an absolute last resort. Again, though, if the fonts aren't embedded in the PDF in the first place it still won't look right.

 

[rande]

I've had different files over the days and looking at them side by side, they both have the same fonts universLTStd_BldCn, cn, light.
One looks reg and the other looks like it should; condensed; and we got a paser of the newest change and its reg but the file is condensed. Its wrapping differently.

 

[DCurry]

lol
i'm telling you, don't open that client's file in acrobat. open it with photoshop or illustrator or preview and resave as something else, then you have no font problems.

The sheer ignorance of this statement is staggering.

 

[WharfRat]

In the "Page Display" preference of Acrobat
there is a checkbox for "Use Local Fonts".
Turn that off and Acrobat forces itself to use the embedded fonts only.
If something is not embedded - you may then get the warning that Acrobat cannot extract that font.
If you see what font is not embedded by the "Cmd+D"
your could then load that font into your Suitcase or Library or
better yet InDesigns font folder
then place the PDF into InDesign and export a new PDF
which will then pick up the font and embed it.
(If it does not have restrictions)

MSD

 

[Visualaid]

The sheer ignorance of this statement is staggering.

I am pretty ignorant.

 

[Visualaid]

"Hi,
The United States Patent and Trademark Office does not allow submission of PDF files with non-embedded fonts.
I know how to create documents from Word, etc. that comply with this requirement, but I frequently get PDFs from other sources that do not have all their fonts embedded, especially the asian fonts.
I know that one possible fix is to print the existing PDF as a PDF image. "
Adobe Community: Fix non-embedded fonts for USPTO filing
this link also offers some good ideas.

Well this guy must be pretty ignorant too DCurry.
This is what I was trying to say from the beginning.
"I know that one possible fix is to print the existing PDF as a PDF image."

 

[DCurry]

Bu that's not what you said from the beginning - you are advocating opening the PDF in Photoshop. I am against that for the reasons I stated in this thread. This is the first mention of "printing as a PDF image."

Also, I'm not sure submitting files to the US Patent Office is really germane to the discussion, unless the USPO has a printing facility that I'm not aware of. It seems to me the point of that discussion was how to meet the USPO's requirements. I have a feeling that folks who are submitting for patents are not overly concerned if the font used in their submission is Times New Roman or Adobe Garamond - they just care that the paperwork is properly submitted. Contrast that with a graphic designer who painstakingly chooses every font in his/her design and needs the artwork to be printed accurately and with the highest quality.

Having worked in prepress for 18 years, I also receive my fair share of PDFs without fonts properly embedded. Usually they are the most common PC fonts like Arial and Times New Roman, and this is because the PDF preset the client used is set to not embed the most common 14 fonts. In these cases I open the PDF on a Windows machine (because that is invariably what the customer used) that has all the basic fonts that the average user has, then I use Pitstop to embed the fonts. Sometimes I'll use Acrobat's built-in PDF Fixup to embed the fonts, but that doesn't always work.

 

[Visualaid]

Bu that's not what you said from the beginning - you are advocating opening the PDF in Photoshop. I am against that for the reasons I stated in this thread. This is the first mention of "printing as a PDF image."

Also, I'm not sure submitting files to the US Patent Office is really germane to the discussion, unless the USPO has a printing facility that I'm not aware of. It seems to me the point of that discussion was how to meet the USPO's requirements. I have a feeling that folks who are submitting for patents are not overly concerned if the font used in their submission is Times New Roman or Adobe Garamond - they just care that the paperwork is properly submitted. Contrast that with a graphic designer who painstakingly chooses every font in his/her design and needs the artwork to be printed accurately and with the highest quality.

Having worked in prepress for 18 years, I also receive my fair share of PDFs without fonts properly embedded. Usually they are the most common PC fonts like Arial and Times New Roman, and this is because the PDF preset the client used is set to not embed the most common 14 fonts. In these cases I open the PDF on a Windows machine (because that is invariably what the customer used) that has all the basic fonts that the average user has, then I use Pitstop to embed the fonts. Sometimes I'll use Acrobat's built-in PDF Fixup to embed the fonts, but that doesn't always work.

Printing a pdf as an image is pretty much the same thing as opening it with photoshop and resaving.
I have problems with times/&new roman because we are using font book and suitcase which have different versions of the fonts like tt, ps, etc. I personally think fontbook would be just fine instead of having 2.

 

[DCurry]

I personally think fontbook would be just fine instead of having 2.

I agree that you should just have one font manager, but I disagree that it should be Font Book. It's not for pros. You're better off to stick with Suitcase, although my font manager of choice is Linotype FontExplorer (there is a free version that still works great, though I'm not entirely sure if the free version works with the very latest Mac OS.)

Sounds like you need to get your font situation in order. Once that's under control everything else gets easier. If I were in your shoes I'd do some research on what fonts are required by your operating system, then clean out all your font folders that the OS uses (except for the required ones). Then you use Suitcase (or Linotype FontExplorer) for all your font management and never again open Font Book.

 

[Visualaid]

I agree that you should just have one font manager, but I disagree that it should be Font Book. It's not for pros. You're better off to stick with Suitcase, although my font manager of choice is Linotype FontExplorer (there is a free version that still works great, though I'm not entirely sure if the free version works with the very latest Mac OS.)

Sounds like you need to get your font situation in order. Once that's under control everything else gets easier. If I were in your shoes I'd do some research on what fonts are required by your operating system, then clean out all your font folders that the OS uses (except for the required ones). Then you use Suitcase (or Linotype FontExplorer) for all your font management and never again open Font Book.

I have used fontbook for a long time. I have use suitcase for a long time. I prefer fontbook.
Suitcase causes problems, and I'm saying this because I stepped into this iMac's suitcase setup from the last guy that was in this seat and he totally trashed his suitcase; now I deal with it. Having to clean font caches, activate this, deactivate that...he left multiple versions of the same fonts in suitcase and never used fontbook, so now i can't just delete fonts out of suitcase because of all our customer files that are connected to those suitcase fonts. Fontbook keeps everything just how i like it, if I were starting from scratch, Fontbook, that's all I need.

 

[Visualaid]

What are you basing "it's not for pros" off of. "the ignorance of this statement is staggering"

 

[DCurry]

This thread may shed some light:

I've had it with Font Book

 

[Possumgal]

Suitcase would automatically activate any deactivated fonts needed when you open a document, so you can keep most of them deactivated except for what you use all the time. Font Book doesn't do that. Now that I am stuck with only Font Book, I just have to keep them all activated and scroll through a long list every time I need a font, or face going back and activating one or two every time I open an already started job.

Guess which one I'd rather have.

 

[Stephen Marsh]

If budget was a concern and one only had Apple FontBook, then I would look into an old copy of the free version of Linotype Font Explorer X (there were versions for both Mac and Win). The free version is no longer supported and it only had plug-ins for auto activation of fonts for the CS-CS3 and Xpress 6.5-7. That being said, when it comes to font management, budget should not be a serious issue - it is fundamental to working with native files.

Using FontBook, one can use the Spotlight search field to narrow down the long list of fonts.

When I was in production, I did not always auto activate fonts, I usually preferred a semi automated approach. In Font Explorer X, I had font sets for creative work when designing and client sets for dealing with regular or one off work. I would manually activate and deactivate the font sets as required.


Stephen Marsh