Outlining Your Fonts: Is It Still Necessary?

There are many reasons and myths out there why you should convert your text to outlines and while most of the time this won’t be even necessary, there are still a lot of misconceptions on this topic so we’re here to help you understand.

The most heard reason to convert your text to outline is to avoid any possible font related issues during the printing process. To some extent this can be true. However, a PDF file is designed to be a self-contained and all inclusive file format that embeds your font automatically, so unless your printer needs to open your file in other applications like Adobe Illustrator or Adobe Photoshop (which won’t be needed a lot) or deliver a file format other than PDF, you won’t need to convert your text to outlines.

InDesign always embeds your fonts in the PDF if the font designer’s End User License Agreement (EULA) allows this. There are some possible scenarios that could cause some issues whenever a font is somehow not embeddable for InDesign but this is quite unlikely. 

There are many experienced designers out there sharing their perspective on this topic why it’s not needed to outline your text anymore but it’s still the go-to method for most designers whenever they’re preparing their files for print. 

But remember it won’t be needed if you’re working with the PDF file format and if it won’t be required for someone else to open the file in the meantime. Because once it’s opened in for example Adobe Illustrator by someone who doesn’t have access to the font, it can’t be saved again without loss of the font’s original appearance so in that case it would be needed to either embed the font into Adobe Illustrator or outline your text.

Nevertheless, most designers still prefer to outline their text as it gives some peace of mind (which we can understand if you’ve always done it this way) so we’ll explain some of the easiest methods to do this.

Before we start, something that’s always important to remember when you’re converting your text to outlines: Make a backup! So either duplicate your file before preparing to export or hit Undo (Cmd + Z) after exporting your file to go back to its editable state. What a nightmare it would be if you saved that outlined version and closed the screen, am I right? So please avoid this and make sure you work with a backup.

So once you have set up your document correctly, it’s time to export. As you'll read down below there are some methods that won’t require any changes in your InDesign document at all so you won’t need to make a document or worry about any non-editable elements.

InDesign

Converting text to outlines in InDesign could cause multiple issues depending on your contents. For example, in case you’re working with underlines, strikethroughs, bullets and numbering in your document you’ll notice that those elements disappear once you click ‘Type > Create Outlines’. That’s no good.

You could consider converting your outlines in Adobe Acrobat but in case you need multiple rounds of feedback somehow after making the file print-ready, this needs to be done every time you export the file.

But in case you do prefer that method, this is how you do it.

After you’ve created a PDF of your file, follow these simple steps to convert your text to outlines:

1. Open your PDF file in Acrobat Pro and open the Print Production panel.
   
2. Click on ‘Preflight’. (In case you can’t see the Print Production option, go to the Tools panel in the top menu and add it to your toolbar from there)
   
3. Head over to the Search field at the top right of the Preflight dialog box and search for ‘Outlines.’ You’ll see the ‘Convert fonts to outlines’ appear in the list.
   
4. With the ‘Convert to outlines’ fixup selected, click ‘Analyze and Fix’, and save the file under a new name. To make it clear to the printer (and yourself) that the file contains converted outlines, consider adding ‘-outlines.pdf’ to the end of your file name.
   

That’s it!

If you want to check if all text is indeed converted properly, go to Adobe Acrobat > Properties > Fonts. If done correctly this list should be empty as there are no fonts left anymore in this document. 

You could also drag the PDF file into Adobe Illustrator and use the Selection Tool (A) to select the text and see if the fonts are outlined.

So now we have walked through this method, let us share another method which has blown some minds from many experienced designers whenever we share this. This saves you tons of time after setting it up and can be used for your next documents as well.

And most importantly, it will keep your underlines, strikethroughs, bullets, numbering and other elements that would have been deleted with the conventional way of doing it.

So let’s dive into it.

In a nutshell, you’ll use the Transparency Flattener to convert your text automatically whenever you export the file to a PDF. 

To do this, follow these simple steps:

1. Create a Custom Flattener Setting by going to Edit > Transparency Flattener Presets. 
   
2. Choose [High Resolution] from the Presets dialog box and click ’New…’
   
3. In the Preset Options panel, keep everything as is but make sure you enable ‘Convert All Text to Outlines’
   
4. Give it a suitable name for you to make it easy to recognise for your next projects and click ‘OK.
   
5. With your new Preset selected, click ‘OK’ again to close the dialog box.

Now you have created your own custom Preset, all you have to do is placing a Transparency Object on each page. You could place this object in your Master Pages to make it even easier. So for example, place a small rectangle somewhere on your page with a transparency of 0.01%. Even the tiniest element would be enough to trigger the preset we just made.

Now head over to Export (Cmd + E) and set the Compatibility in the top right corner to Acrobat 4, which lets you implement the Flattener we just created. In the ‘Advanced’ panel, select your new Preset under ‘Transparency Flattener’.

Set the rest to your preferred Settings and click ‘OK’.

That’s it! 

And look at those underlines and bullets! All in place as they should be.

Now you check your document the same way by using Adobe Acrobat or drag it into Adobe Illustrator.

Adobe Illustrator

In case you created your document in Adobe Illustrator, things are a bit simpler because all those additional styles to typography will be converted correctly so you’ll keep any underline or bullet.

You can either use the Adobe Acrobat method we mentioned before to keep your text editable at all times or convert your text to outline inside your Adobe Illustrator document.

To do this, follow these simple steps:

1. Select your text
   
2. Go to Type > Create Outlines (Shift + Cmd + O)
   

That’s it!

Now you can set your usual Export Settings when creating your PDF without additional custom settings.

In case you outlined your text inside the document though, make sure to Undo (Cmd + Z) after exporting to get back your editable version or create a duplicate before even converting to outlines.

There you have it! Different ways to convert your text to outlines. So when you’re working on your next Business Card or anything else that needs to get printed, remember that it’s not required to outline your text in case you’re exporting the file to PDF. But when you do, you now have some clever ways up your sleeve to make this process easier and faster for you.

In case you still have any questions on this topic or something different, get in touch with us and our lovely Support Team would be happy to help you out.

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