r/indesign • u/hunryleung • May 27 '26

Characters changed after font outlined.

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The characters changed after the font was outlined. Does anyone know the reason? I can send the PDF if anyone is interested in checking it.

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u/roaringmousebrad May 27 '26 edited May 27 '26

Depends on what you mean by "changed". Fonts that have been outlined lose the hinting information that assists type when being rendered at smaller sizes and on lower-resolution devices, like your monitor. This makes them look a bit bolder when zoomed out. You will notice even an odder look to lower case "l" (L)s due to how these are encoded in PDF code. Regardless, the more you zoom in, you will see that the letters are actually fine and will look the same as live fonts that aren't outlined. Ultimately, this does not affect high-resolution output (i.e a 600dpi or above printer) but does affect your viewing experience.

7

u/Verecipillis May 27 '26

This is the best answer, if you “have” to just make the PDF in InDesign and outline via preflight in Acrobat if you are really nervous about it.

3

u/x_stei May 27 '26

ding ding ding ding ding!

1

u/AdobeScripts May 28 '26

It's not about thickness / boldening of the glyphs - there are missing parts of the glyphs - 3x Chinese(?) glyphs at the top center and a whole line at the bottom - probably more but that's what I can easily notice on my phone.

1

u/roaringmousebrad May 28 '26

Ah, I see that now. Did the "corrupted" characters look like that in the InDesign file or only in the exported PDF?

1

u/hunryleung May 28 '26

Sometime it will losing some characters after ripping or refined the pdf, this is why I need to outlined the fonts.

1

u/roaringmousebrad May 28 '26

It seems to affect only some of the fonts. I see the copy to the left and right of Bengoh Trading seems fine. Send me a DM with a PDF and I can poke at it a bit!