Text in all PDFs that I create with InDesignappears jagged, both on a Mac and on a PC. Thishappens

[Ryan_K_Hasan@adobeforums.com]

Text in all PDFs that I create with InDesign appears jagged, both on a Mac and on a PC. This happens with all documents, regardless of the PDF export settings. Has anyone else had this problem? Does anyone know of a solution? Thanks.

[Russell_Goodman@adobeforums.com]

Ryan:

Any chance you have transparent items interacting with the text? Try to build your InDesign files with the text being on the top most and a individual layer.

Any chance you have your PDF export set to convert all text to outlines? If so, turn it off.

In your Acrobat preferences, under "Page Display", what settings do you have for Rendering?

[Ryan_K_Hasan@adobeforums.com]

No; I even did a flattener preview to make double-sure. The PDF export was not set to convert to outlines. I've tried both the "smooth for monitor" and "smooth for laptop/LCD screens" preferences on a Mac, and also the "Use Cool Type" preference on a PC.

Thanks for your help.

[graffiti]

What type of fonts are they?

[Ryan_K_Hasan@adobeforums.com]

The original offender was Neutraface Light Alt (OpenType). However, I tried a heavier Neutraface, as well as Helvetica, Apple Gothic, and Courier, and they also look jagged (though perhaps not as much).

[graffiti]

And do they do it when the file is viewed at 100%?

[Ryan_K_Hasan@adobeforums.com]

Yeah. They start to look better at 150% or 200%, but still off. Thanks again.

[graffiti]

They start to look better at 150% or 200%




Weird. That's opposite of what I experience. Normally your best view is at 100%.

Can you post a link to a file?

[Ryan_K_Hasan@adobeforums.com]

Thanks! Here you go:

<http://www.ryanhasandesign.com/test/RHD_InvT-01_red.pdf>

FYI, the first time I viewed it online (in Safari) it substituted a different font, even though the font (Neutra) is embedded into the PDF, of course. Hopefully, that strange phenomenon won't happen to you.

[Russell_Goodman@adobeforums.com]

Maybe I need new glasses, but all the fonts look OK to me. And Preflight shows the fonts are embedded.

[graffiti]

Fortunately no strange font embedding issues. My view at various zoom levels (on both Mac and Windows using Acrobat Pro) is fine unless I switch off font smoothing in Acrobat preferences.

In preferences is "use local fonts" turned on or off (didn't make any difference for me but it may for you)?

Could it be a monitor resolution issue? Not sure.

[Ryan_K_Hasan@adobeforums.com]

Thanks again.

It doesn't look too terrible to me, but I looked at PDFs I sent using the same font to someone on their PC, and it looked far worse. It's good on the one hand to hear that it looks okay on your PC, but that still leaves me wondering why it doesn't on theirs.

I do have "use local fonts" checked on my computer. I didn't look for that particular preference on the PC, but I did try unchecking and then re-checking the "Smooth Fonts" and "Use CoolType" preferences (it looked like crap no matter which was checked). Their monitor resolution seems to be normal (1024x768 laptop monitor, I believe).