Technicians claim my file doesn't have fonts embedded…but they're incorrect, right?

[ceencha]

I recently uploaded this file to Amazon :

http://www.ccwatershed.org/pdfs/90876-font-pdf-embedded/download/

But when Amazon converted it, they made it look like this:

http://www.ccwatershed.org/media/photologue/photos/90877-errors-font-embed.png

(LULU had the same issue.)

When I asked why, they said:

Our Technical Department team checked your title ID 7934337 and they were able to confirm that the visual errors the your are seeing in the print interior file are a result of unembedded fonts specifically, PlantinMTStd-Regular and PlantinMTStd-Italic.

Question:

Does this file really not have embedded fonts?

http://www.ccwatershed.org/pdfs/90876-font-pdf-embedded/download/

Also: those are just 2 pages out of 100—most of the other pages were just fine.

As you can see here:

http://www.ccwatershed.org/media/photologue/photos/90875-my-version.png

…the file was created using the most recent & up-to-date version of Adobe Indesign.

The musical files were created with Sibelius 8.4.2 and were exported as PDF before being 'placed' into Adobe Indesign.

[Steve Werner]

You definitely have embedded the PlantinMTStd-Regular as shown as an Embedded Subset in this screen capture of the Font Properties in Acrobat:

PlantinMTStd-Italic is not listed as a used font in that particular file.

[ceencha]

Do you have any idea what could be causing the errors?

[Steve Werner]

No, but I'm completely unfamiliar with what kind of process you're asking Amazon and Lulu to do. It looks like they're trying to rasterize the music into a PNG image. It could be a bug in their conversion software but I really don't know.

[Dov Isaacs · Accepted solution]

On behalf of Adobe Systems Incorporated …

There is absolutely nothing wrong whatsoever with this PDF file in terms of the fonts and how they are embedded. And as Steve pointed out, PlantinMTStd-Italic isn't even referenced by this PDF file!

The only “issue” that I can find is that the text is RGB black, i.e. RGB=(0,0,0) which depending upon the processes used by the print service provider might yield a “rich black” that might cause the text to be printed in a mixture of all four process colors. Skilled professional printers normally know how to set the RIP or DFE (digital front end for digital presses) to automatically convert R=G=B to grayscale, i.e. CMYK=(0,0,0,K). If you wanted to fix this issue, Acrobat Pro DC provides a preflight fixup explicitly for this. In Acrobat Preflight, access the Essentials library, select Single Fixups, and choose the Convert color to B/W fixup under the Color spaces, spot colors, inks group. Run that fix and this color issue is gone.

I also tried printing the two pages you provided directly from Acrobat Pro DC with no problem whatsoever.

But quite frankly, I don't think that the problem that they are complaining about has anything to do with color. There must be some PDF workflow product that they are using (not from Adobe) that simply isn't up to spec, possibly choking on the Opus music fonts possibly in combination with CID-encoding.

Perchance did you provide the InDesign files to these folks possibly allowing them to create their own PDF file?

Bottom line is that you will probably need to find some other vendor to do your printing.

Best of luck. There are plenty of hungry printers out there who are not incompetent!

          - Dov

[MW Design]

Looks like an encoding issue to me...Here's what pdfToolbox says about the actual embedding.

I can open that PDF, refry it and the errors don't occur. If the music and stanzas were produced in Sibelius, I would likely just convert the fonts to curves and be done with it. You will not be able to do much better at another POD. It is possible BookBaby is using better equipment/workflow, but it's been a while since I used them. They do cost more. But, like I mentioned, I would just take those Sibelius PDFs and convert to curves and make the single black plate if that's what they want.

[Dov Isaacs]

None of those informational notes from pdfToolbox (also available within Acrobat Preflight) should ever cause the type of problems noted, especially when they refer to the problem being a font that isn't even reference.

          - Dov

[MW Design]

Aside from a phantom italic style from their so-called preflight, the problem of encoding does exist at their end.

Just converting those Sibelius pdfs to curves resolves the issue and it can go to print.

[Willi Adelberger]

You should never—NEVER—convert fonts to curves in InDesign.

I would only allow it in Acrobat Pro, but only for specific purposes, like cutter machines.

[MW Design]

And I would use pdfToolbox as it is simpler and more assured than Acrobat. So yes, post-pdf production if at all possible.

[Dov Isaacs]

Mike,

Pssst. The code in Acrobat Preflight is exactly the same as in pdfToolbox for those functions! This is one of my responsibilities here at Adobe! 

          - Dov

[MW Design]

Sorry, Dov. I know all the preflight is licensed from callas...but I use Acrobat 11 and forgot DC has the fix up now. I do have the current pdfToolbox and so use it there.

[ceencha]

Willi Adelberger, why do you say NEVER to convert fonts to curves, when other people (see above) tell me to do that?

[…and how do I do that?]

[Dov Isaacs]

You have a two part question. I'll try to answer them.

In terms of why not converting text realized via fonts to outlines, there are several problems:

• Increased PDF file size.
• Increased RIP time.
• Inability to search text in the resultant PDF file.
• Inability to use text edit functions in Acrobat on such converted text.
• Generally poorer rendering of text, especially for at smaller point sizes and with highly styled typefaces, due to the lack to “hinting” used when rendering text via fonts. When using outlines, the outlines are linearly scaled resulting in overly bold text as well as potential loss of detail and filling of characters.

In terms of the second part of your question, there is a simple fixup in Adobe Acrobat Pro DC Preflight that will do this conversion. We recommend this only in the case of an emergency situation, recognizing the issues outlined above.

     - Dov

[ceencha]

Dear Mr. Dov Isaacs,

What you say (“Generally poorer rendering of text…etc.”) scares me tremendously.

The person here does not mention “poorer rendering” :

InDesign tutorial: Converting text to outlines the right way | lynda.com - YouTube

I suppose the only way would be to order two copies?  One with CURVES, one without—through Amazon—and look real hard at the results?

[Dov Isaacs]

NO!

Look at my message above. If you absolutely must do such a conversion, do it in Acrobat using the Preflight method shown above after you export your PDF. Don't muck with your InDesign document at all!

The InDesign tutorial you reference above was put together by David Blatner, a good friend of mine and an industry expert, but the tutorial was produced before it was easy to do the outlining in Acrobat!

And yes, he definitely agrees that outlining is the wrong thing to do unless one has some very special circumstances.

          - Dov

[ceencha]

Dov Isaacs, that is so cool that you personally know the creator of that video.

I used to watch him ALL THE TIME — about 5 years ago — and I was so very impressed with him.

[ceencha]

MW Design; THANK YOU (and everyone) for this assistance!

When you say “encoding error” does that mean I did something wrong?

[MW Design]

Hello ceencha,

No, I don't think you did something wrong. But the offsets in the font tables can cause issues if a pdf is not used in a pdf workflow/rip process. Acrobat (or Reader) itself can suss things out when printing, though non-Adobe RIPs and or workflows at a print establishment can misinterpret the encoding.

As regards converting text to curves. It is a stop-gap, more or less extreme solution to the problem. It shouldn't be used willy-nilly as part of a modern normal workflow (which many/most PODs do not have). Mainly at the print device everything is fine as long as in the PDF it looks correct. It does slow down processing of the PDF because of the shear number of path instructions. For a PDF meant for on-screen usage, the PDF is slower to view but there is also the issue of once fonts are converted to curves, they (the fonts) loose all "hinting instructions" which smooth the on-screen appearance.

[ceencha]

Mr. Dov Isaacs,

LULU also had the same problem, except that LULU's "preview" didn't show the errors.

Amazon's "preview" did show the error.

Thank you for your assistance—and please let me know if you have ideas how I can fix this issue.

5 seconds ago, I notified Amazon of this thread, and the technicians will be using this thread to see what the issue is—so everybody say hello to Amazon's technicians!

[Dov Isaacs]

You can have Amazon and/or Lulu's technicians contact me directly (via private message on these forums or via e-mail isaacs@adobe.com) and maybe I can help them sort through this.

          - Dov

[ceencha]

Here is what what they said:

This is, indeed, a font related issue. The fonts PlantinMTStd-Regular & PlantinMTStd-Italic cannot be used commercially due to font permission restrictions. Some restrictions prevent us from successfully producing a print file, some restrictions prevent the file from printing and some do what happened in this file. In this instance, the restrictions do not prevent file processing or printing but allows the system to re-map, or replace, with an available font. With remapping, the characters may not map, or match, exactly.   This can only be corrected in the submitted file. The fonts will need to be replaced or the publisher must acquire a commercially viable version of the fonts.  We apologize for any inconvenience that this may cause and hopes this information helps in the publication process.

[Dov Isaacs]

Our analysis was done on the two pages of the PDF file that you provided to us. If you provide me with the entire PDF file, we can ascertain what is going on. For the two pages you provided, there was no PlantinMTStd-Italic font used.

For the PlantinMTStd-Regular font that was embedded in the PDF file, analysis of the embedded font showed that it certainly has privileges for Preview and Print per below. Preview and Print embedding privileges are exactly what you need for embedding fonts in a PDF file for viewing and printing.

Maybe in the other pages of this file there are other font subsets that are problematic? That why we ask you to let us look at the entire file and on that basis, we may need to have a serious discussion with these “technicians.”

          - Dov

[ceencha]

Here is what they say now (sounds like garbage to me):

“After reviewing your files, our Technical Services team has indicated that the issue still lies with the fonts. Please open the PDF file and go to File > Properties. On the Font tab, there will be a list of all the fonts in the file. The fonts are embedded as a subset, this means only the characters used in the document are embedded. This is causing the font problems because the full character map is not available when printed. The best solution to this is to outline the fonts. The Create Outlines command gets the font outline information from the font type, the characters are converted into outlines retaining all graphics formatting. This action will need to be taken in the parent InDesign file and outline the fonts in the file. The outline option can be found in the "Type" tab in the tool bar. Once the fonts have been outlined you can export or print as a New PDF (different name) and upload this file to your account.”

I am … not able to upload the full content to the internet, because much is under our copyright—does that make sense?

[BobLevine]

Garbage is being kind.