Indesign CS4 pdf font issues!

bigdave

bigdave

Well-Known Member
Weve recently upgraded to Indesign CS4 at work and were having a few issues I hope one of you lot may be able to help with?

With CS3 when exporting to pdf there was the odd font that would cause issues and display as boxes on the pdf or would prevent the pdf being made. This has never really been an issue before because the fonts in question were things like Apple Chancery which we dont use very often. Since swapping to CS4 were getting quite a few font errors like this but its with fairly important fonts such as Helvetica Black and Helvetica Compressed, both of which are used 1000's of times throughout our files & documents.

Is there any way to fix these font errors?
 
Generally I just convert the particular font to paths: Type -> Create Outlines. It can be a bit of a pain if you need to go back and edit the text so I always make a copy of the document as it is before I convert the font. I don't use CS4 but do use CS3 so I assume this option is still available.

Hope this helps.
 
Green Sheep Design,
Generally there are between 100 & 1000 seperate instances of the problem fonts in each Indesign Document. Each in seperate text boxes. It's currently taking over an hour per font per document to find and outline each instance.

SparkCreative,
We just use Font Book to manage fonts. We pdf directly from InDesign using various settings. I know we should really post script and then pdf from distiller but we only have one copy of acrobat pro between 4 of us so thats not possible.
 
bigdave said:
Green Sheep Design,
Generally there are between 100 & 1000 seperate instances of the problem fonts in each Indesign Document. Each in seperate text boxes. It's currently taking over an hour per font per document to find and outline each instance.

SparkCreative,
We just use Font Book to manage fonts. We pdf directly from InDesign using various settings. I know we should really post script and then pdf from distiller but we only have one copy of acrobat pro between 4 of us so thats not possible.
Click to expand...

Why not try FontExplorer or Suitcase? I find FontBook is not at all reliable when you're doing anything complicated with a more that just a few fonts. FontDoctor is meant to help with this kind of thing too.

I send PDF's straight from InDesign all the time, no problems.
 
This really doesn't make sense any more. In the picture below, I have opend the same pdf (made directly from InDesign) in preview (on the right) and Acrobat (on the left). Why does it display correctly in one but not the other?

1234.jpg


its not an issue with acrobat as the pdf also prints like this and when transferred to the pc system or sent to our printers, its the same.

I use font explorer at home for freelance but I will need to speak to my boss about swapping to FE in the studio. I may try it on my machine and see if it makes any difference.
 
You might have another instance of the same font on your machine which is conflicting. Also, check your print settings, then ensure that under the graphics tab, that your have download fonts set as complete.

I'll never understand the nature of the pdf. I had a password protected pdf the other day, and the client decided that they wouldn't submit the password. So I opened it in preview, then re-saved. And somehow I had full access to everything in Illustrator. This was in snow leopard.

I definately recommend font suitcase, it's extremely handy.
 
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