Must know PDF info 55 Responses

Last post: 3 months ago | Thread started: Sep 5, 08, 7:59 a.m.

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• BaskerviIle

  I've been having problems with the rendering of lowercase 'i's and 'l's in outlined text (in logos etc) in PDFs for ages. Sometimes they render fatter than normal in Acrobat, like this:
  

  

  I always ignored it because when you zoom in on a PDF it goes away and it prints fine. But after much searching I found a solution.

  It has to do with the fact that when you outline type it loses all the hinting information (the data that tells the font how to render on screen).
  Acrobat reads rectangles differently and so renders them with an outline. Lowercase i's and l's in sans serifs are generally rectangles so they are rendered with outlines.

  Anyway, the way to solve it is to add extra flattened curve points to the outline of the rectangles and then Acrobat won't read them as rectangles and it renders them fine.

  Silly really but that is a workable solution, here is a useful article about the issue:

  http://www.underconsideration.co…

  Sep 5, 08, 7:59 a.m. – Permalink

• doesnotexist

  interesting. I always have clients telling me the l's aren't the same, and I always have to assure them that they are and they need to zoom in if they want the screen to render it properly.

  wouldn't mind it if they fixed this guy.

  

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  Dog-earSep 5, 08, 8:02 a.m. – Permalink

• janne76

  yes, i always had this as well.
  the zooming solution made me now worry about it too much anymore though.

  

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  Dog-earSep 5, 08, 8:03 a.m. – Permalink

• BaskerviIle

  yeah, I always told them to zoom in and print it to prove it was fine. But when you have PDF for reading on screen and your logo is featured a lot then they're not going to zoom in and it looks bad.
  More and more people only use pdfs for reading on screen so it's nice to know a solution

  • true!– janne761/2

    well said, I concur.– doesnotexist2/2

  

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  Dog-earSep 5, 08, 8:05 a.m. – Permalink

• jimzyk

  well done mister baskerville. i think everyone has come across this at some stage, its a silly little thing - thanks for the link good stuff!

  

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  Dog-earSep 5, 08, 8:09 a.m. – Permalink

• ESKEMA

  nice info!
  always wondered why that happened...
  thanks

  

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  Dog-earSep 5, 08, 8:17 a.m. – Permalink