Learn how font embedding works in PDF documents to ensure your PDF displays and prints correctly across different systems.
Fonts maintain the visual integrity of your PDF documents. Adobe Acrobat Distiller offers several options for handling fonts, including embedding and substitution, to ensure your documents carry their intended appearance across devices.
Fonts embedding
Font embedding is the process of including font data within a PDF file so that the exact font used in the original document is available when the PDF is viewed or printed. A font can be embedded only if it contains a setting by the font vendor that permits it to be embedded.
When you embed fonts, you prevent font substitution, ensuring readers see the text in its original font. Embedding the font slightly increases file size unless the document uses CID fonts, commonly used in Asian languages. You can embed or substitute fonts in Adobe Acrobat or when you export an InDesign document to PDF.
Font embedding options include:
- Embedding the entire font
- Embedding a subset containing only the characters used in the file
Subsetting ensures that your fonts and font metrics are used with a custom font name during printing. For example, your version of Adobe Garamond, not your printing service provider's version, can always be used for viewing and printing.
Type 1 and TrueType fonts can be embedded if they are included in the PostScript file or are available in one of the font locations that Distiller monitors and are not restricted from embedding.
Font substitution
When a font cannot be embedded because of the font vendor's settings, and someone who opens or prints a PDF does not have access to the original font, Acrobat Distiller substitutes the original font:
- Multiple Master typefaces are temporarily substituted. For example, AdobeSerifMM is used for a missing serif font, and AdobeSansMM is used for a missing sans serif font.
- The substitution fonts can stretch or condense to fit, maintaining line and page breaks from the original document.
- The substitution cannot always match the shape of the original characters, especially with unconventional typefaces like scripts.
For Asian text, Acrobat uses fonts from the installed Asian language kit or similar fonts on the user's system. Fonts from some languages or with unknown encodings cannot be substituted. In such cases, the text appears as bullets in the file.
If you have difficulty copying and pasting text from a PDF, first check if the problem font is embedded. Select Document properties from the Menu (Windows) or File (macOS). Then, select the Fonts tab in the Document Properties dialog box. For an embedded font, try changing the point where it’s embedded rather than sending it inside the PostScript file. Distill the PDF without embedding that font. Then, open the PDF in Acrobat and embed the font using the Preflight fixup.
