Superscripts dropping to baseline

[DCurry]

Okay, this one is scary. I've had 2 jobs in the last couple weeks go bad by exhibiting this behavior, but I can't recreate it on purpose. One job was a customer-supplied PDF, other was an InDesign file from which I exported the PDF using my usual settings. Applications in play are Acrobat Pro 10.1.4, Neo 10.0.2, and Photoshop CS5.1 running on Mac OS 10.6.8.

What's happening is there are some superscript characters that are dropping down to the baseline, and 2 occurrences of a space being put between an opening quote mark and first character ("Wouldn't.." shows up like " Wouldn't..."). This doesn't happen to all the superscripts in the file, nor all the quote marks.

My workflow on both jobs is to open in Acrobat, do a Save As to rename, run my usual preflight routine, remove the crop marks, then save and close. Open in Neo and use it to open the images in Photoshop to correct, then close and save document.

Since I can't recreate the problem on purpose, I don't know if it is occurring before or after I edit the images. I've worked here for over a year and these jobs are routine for us (one is even a monthly publication), and the problem has never happened before. None of these programs, nor the system, has been updated recently. The only change on my machine is that I did install CC last week, but didn't use it on these jobs. I think the one job happened before the CC install, but I can't be positive.

Screenshots show the superscript as supplied, and after me working on it. Got the boss breathing down my neck to explain this.

 

[Possumgal]

This is probably out there, but is it possible that somewhere along the line, a font is being substituted for a newer version that came with CC and it's mucking up things? If it has the same name, preflight might not catch it.

Or maybe there's some kind of clash with something CC installed. Even if you're not running any of its apps, it may have altered something somewhere.

Sounds like it has to be caused by something that changed recently.

 

[tschatz]

If I place each of those PNGs on a layer in ID and rescale them to match, I see significant differences between the different versions of the registration marks and the quote marks. This difference could be the two different effective resolutions, I suppose, but I don't think so.
Open each in Neo and see exactly which font is being used. I think you will find that there is a difference. Also, place each PDF on different layers as art, zoom in and see if anything else changes besides the superscript.

 

[DCurry]

I had to scale one of the PNGs down so that it would be an acceptable size. Everything lines up size and font-wise in the real PDFs.

EDIT - Just re-read your post and I misread it the first time. Will investigate.

2nd EDIT - I compared PDFs and everything is identical except for the position of the register mark.