Dye & Son LogoQuality Printing

Navigation Bar

Navigation Links

Back to Dye Printing Tricks & Tips

 

How Come the Font I Wanted and Used Turned into Courier?

You didn't provide the font's distinct data to whomever tried to open your document. Did you know that even PDFs can substitute the fonts you so lovingly chose? It doesn't always end in Courier Curses, but if New Century Schoolbook seems close enough to New Calendonia Light, Acrobat can make the switch.

But not every program will even try to make a switch to something similarily named (and just be alphabetically close doesn't mean the fonts really should substitute for one another. Especially a graphic glyph versus a regular letterform!)

Here's what I wanted in a Photoshop document.

 

With Courier subsituting, Photoshop added the stroke, bevel, and color overlay but the shadow was done to a rasterized layer so it won't line up. Ugh-lee!

 

 

In this example Courier is substituted in PageMaker. The kerning is smashed as well.

 

Here PageMaker had a close match to one font but didn't even try with two others.

Your best hope is to create a PDF (if that's your workflow) that embeds all fonts used 100%. Adobe currently allows this in their licensing of your paid for fonts. The viewer and outputter can see and image your documents and artwork (most of the time) even if they haven't purchased all the same fonts. If you are handing off a document to an imagesetter/printer then you have to address the licensing that Adobe has changed its corporate mind on or convert all uses of licensed fonts to paths/curves/outlines if you want your document to appear as you designed it.

If I include all these parts, the offsite offset printer has a chance. Now, if I forgot a file...

 
Back to Dye Printing Tricks & Tips
 

Printing / Imagesetting / Graphics / Contact Information / Tips & Tricks / Gallery / Links