Pre-press Fonts to Curves/Outlines Suggestions

[Posterboy]

Hello All,
I often receive artwork with fonts still embedded and not converted to shapes/outlines.

I know I could bounce the artwork back to the client and refuse to print it. But I'm offereing a printing service, helping people print stuff, wrangling their artwork seems to be a part of that, I'm reluctant to just bounce artwork.

I'd really like a piece of software or a system I can run every artwork through that converts fonts to curves, flattens transparencies and converst everything to CMYK.

I have used Adobe Acrobat Pro to do this, though it is a workaround and fiddly.
I have used enfocus Pitstop Pro, and it was ok, it was expensive and I often found just didn't do it, as in certain word groups I would need to individually select and convert to fonts.

How do you guys do it?
Can anyone make suggestions?
Something that can be done remotely would be amazing.

 

[iPrintStuff]

What are you doing in acrobat? Is it maybe something you can just script and run PDF’s through that?

It has always confused me that you need to add the watermark with 0 opacity before flattening the text will work in acrobat.

 

[HaleYeah]

Opening the files in SAi Flexi will give you the ability to convert the fonts to curves when opening.

 

[iamclaus]

I'd really like a piece of software or a system I can run every artwork through that converts fonts to curves, flattens transparencies and converst everything to CMYK.

I have used Adobe Acrobat Pro to do this, though it is a workaround and fiddly.

You can use Acrobat Pro to do all of that. To make it less fiddly, make custom preflight fix up profiles that do the steps that you want. Then, export that profile as a droplet app. From there you can just drag as many files as you want onto the droplet and that custom fix up profile will run and the output files will be saved to where you specified they should during the droplet setup.

That would eliminate having to hunt for each separate fix up for each individual file you open manually.

You could even save multiple profiles and droplets for each combination of tasks you’d like run.

 

[iamclaus]

It has always confused me that you need to add the watermark with 0 opacity before flattening the text will work in acrobat.

You don’t have to do it that way in Acrobat. Access the Preflight panel from Production Tools. In there is a fixup profile to outline fonts in the currently open document.

If you save a droplet from the profile, you end up with essentially a little program you can drop multiple files onto that will then automatically run that profile in Acrobat. No settings to hunt for or configure. Drag, drop, wait, retrieve output.

 

[Bobby H]

PDFs with embedded fonts aren't so bad, particularly if you only have to print it. It can be a bigger pain if you have to import the artwork for further editing. That really depends on the app used to create the PDF and the choices the user made when creating the PDF. Embedded fonts are a minor issue. Some applications can at least convert them to outlines when placing/importing the artwork. I use Adobe Illustrator for such tasks. It will convert embedded fonts via the Flatten Transparency dialog box. The bigger thing is being able to use Astute Graphics' Vector First Aid plug-in to clean up a lot of the other trash.

For some applications there is really is no other choice than to kick the file back to the client and make them convert the fonts to outlines. It's a rookie mistake for someone to leave type objects as live fonts in something like a logo file to be traded around multiple computers and even multiple platforms.

 

[WYLDGFI]

We run into this same issue quite often when having to set up custom cutouts and such. Checking files for PMS colors or a client doesn't do that and we are forced to make adjustments to color. Its usually poor file prep on the client end. I always tell our clients to be sure to outline fonts and send print ready files as it saves them time and effort down the road. It allows us the flexibility to adjust or correct an error of theirs (or ours) on the fly and get the job out Correctly & on time still. I tend to stress that we make every and all efforts to do the job right once rather than they have a mess up or we cause one due to a font issue within the Rip even.

 

[myront]

Don't know if it's a "rookie" mistake or many "schooled" artists are trained to embed the fonts instead of converting them. We re-iterate all the time when we're asked what type of we'd like. "pdf with fonts converted, no prepress marks or crop mark, and no bleeds" then we find out they have no idea what any of that means. Yes, I am well aware that a text heavy file will become extremely "bloated" if fonts are converted and for that I suggest sending the pdf and separately any font files used. It's very rare that we send any pdf direct to print without checking dimensions first. 99% of the time they aren't even close to the requested size or something needs moved around or characters didn't convert properly blah, blah, blah. We've had many pdf's we had no choice but to open in photoshop and save out as tiff.

 

[WYLDGFI]

Don't know if it's a "rookie" mistake or many "schooled" artists are trained to embed the fonts instead of converting them.

Its both. People just rushing thru the process to submit make the mistake...both newbs and seasoned professionals. I prefer to have bleed especially when trimming stuff. We can always crop out the excess. Its easier to remove than try and add in 99% of cases.

 

[myront]

Its both. People just rushing thru the process to submit make the mistake...both newbs and seasoned professionals. I prefer to have bleed especially when trimming stuff. We can always crop out the excess. Its easier to remove than try and add in 99% of cases.

Bleeds can have there place but in order to maximized material usage such as a 4 x 8 sheet of coroplast one can fit 10ea 18 x 24 signs but not if there are bleeds involved. Any bleeds can easily be added on my end.