Regulating PDFunkiness
You'll notice in the image below that we are zooming in on the words 'Visual Image Advertising' and there are the noticeably bolder letters 'l' and 'i' in the words. As we zoom in, that disparity disappears quicker than my stapler. (Seriously guys, I want it back.)
For the past five years I've been explaining to our AE's that this is just an acrobat issue, and there is no way for me to export the file any differently that can make that annoying bold l's & i's go away. You can imagine my excitement when I discovered a setting that can just make that stop. I felt like Marco Polo. Vasco da Gama. Columbus, even! I had discovered a new world. A world without enhanced thin lines.
In your top bar, go: Acrobat (or Reader) > Preferences > Page Display > Click 'Enhance thin lines' to turn it off > BAM! Sanity restored!!!
Notice the difference!
From here on out, typography and design elements should appear as the designer intended them to. Novel idea, right?
For the past five years I've been explaining to our AE's that this is just an acrobat issue, and there is no way for me to export the file any differently that can make that annoying bold l's & i's go away. You can imagine my excitement when I discovered a setting that can just make that stop. I felt like Marco Polo. Vasco da Gama. Columbus, even! I had discovered a new world. A world without enhanced thin lines.
In your top bar, go: Acrobat (or Reader) > Preferences > Page Display > Click 'Enhance thin lines' to turn it off > BAM! Sanity restored!!!
Notice the difference!
From here on out, typography and design elements should appear as the designer intended them to. Novel idea, right?
Blake! You are a genius! Good work...
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If discovering a button = genius... then move over Einstein!
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This has been a constant hassle for me as well! I was so pumped to see this fix, but my PC Acrobat 8 Pro doesn't have the "Enhance thin line" option. Any ideas?
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Micah, unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a simple answer to this. As a lifelong Apple fanatic, I'd say get a Mac! ;o)
But it does appear that you can choose to not convert your text to outlines, and just make sure to embed your fonts in the PDF. When you export your PDF, just make sure the 'Subset fonts when percent of characters used is less than:' is set to 100%. Adobe Illustrator has historically not embedded fonts as well as InDesign, so you may find that you have less issues setting type in that program.
I hope this works. Let us know!
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Ha! I've got macs at home, no such luck at work. (tear) What's crazy is that I normally see the issue in a placed Illustrator file (logo) with outlined text. The PDF is exported from InDesign though.
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I'm just kidding about the Mac!
I believe Acrobat increases the size of these small rectangles to read better in your computers pixel matrix, but that is just me guessing. You can add points to the shapes to the object/letter that is showing up larger than intended. The artifact that look strange are typically rectangles with four points. If you add one or two points it makes Acrobat read it as a complex object and not a path. You can add them by using your pen tool and clicking on your vector.
If its a logo that is problematic this might be the best work-around. It becomes a huge pain to do that to every lowercase letter 'l' in an entire document, though.
Let me know if that works for you!
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