Outlines v.s. Fonts

[Gabriel_Ayala@adobeforums.com]

I am sending a job to a printing company and their response has me concerned about their level of expertise.

What I've provided is a perfectly good PDF. I exported the PDF without compression and I’ve also run a preflight in my InDesign application to check for potential problems. The font they’re requesting does not exist in the publication. The only two fonts used were; Type1: Copperplate Gothic 31 AB and TrueType: Wingdings regular. To be sure the fonts were embedded into the PDF, I have even tested the PDF file on a different machine that contains only the fonts that come with the Windows NT Operating System and the PDF opens and prints successfully without errors.

They claim they need the font "Double Byte" but that's not something I used or even heard of.

They said "We can use the pdf file and export it to photoshop but it would look smoother if we dropped it to freehand/illustrator with the fonts converted to outlines."

___
I responded:
Do you not have Acrobat?
Are we not printing to a PostScript compatible device?
What is the purpose of re-sampling our PDF in a photo editing application and why do we need to convert the fonts to outlines?
___

I thought converting fonts to outlines would reduce the quality? I have not received a response as of yet but what does everyone out there think of this?

I really don't want to have to change printing companies over this issue. This is the cheapest company I could find and it will save me a lot more money if I use them. If I have to go as far as educating them with whatever I can, so be it.

Your opinions are appreciated.

Thank you,
Gabriel

[Bob_Levine]

You get what you pay for.

Bob

[Gabriel_Ayala@adobeforums.com]

Hi Robert,

Am I right about the quality reducing after converting fonts to outlines?

TIA,
Gabriel

[Bob_Levine]

For the most part, yes. Large headlines probably won't be an issue, but
small type will lose its hinting.

Bob

[Guy_Smiley@adobeforums.com]

[email]Gabriel_Ayala@adobeforums.com[/email] wrote in
news:3bb4b8c6.-1@webx.la2eafNXanI:

> They claim they need the font "Double Byte" but that's not
> something I used or even heard of.

The problem is probably that they are using a non-PostScript-compliant
RIP that does not support CID-encoded fonts. A possible workaround is
to generate your PDF using Acrobat Distiller on InDesign-generated
PostScript rather than using InDesign's export function.

[Gabriel_Ayala@adobeforums.com]

Thanks guys!

They said "As far as printing, we are not an offset printer. We do not use Acrobat or Indesign. Only illustrator and freehand files are used to make the screens/film output."

The text is for a rather large sticker (24"X4") and the text is bigger than 100pt. I went ahead and converted the text to outlines and exported an EPS. They said it opened perfectly in Illustrator and they are ready to print.

Thanks again,

Gabe

[Scott_Falkner@adobeforums.com]

Large headlines probably won't be an issue, but small type will lose its
hinting.





True, but at sufficeiently high resolutions (like the >2k dpi of most imagesetters and platemakers) even 10 pt. text will be unaffected.

Try it yourself. Set the same text in any 10 pt. font twice, and convert one of them to outlines. Save an EPS and open it in Photoshop. Use 1800 ppi resolution, 100% scaling, and no antialising. Now tell me which twin has the Tony?