CTRL+Shift+O how can I???????
B. Philippus
The text will display thicker on screen, but if you were to print it, the change in thickness would be marginal at best. Try this:
1. Type some text (Just a few words);
2. Copy, now Ctrl-Shift-O (Make Outlines);
3. Fill the resulting outlines with red;
4. Paste in Front, now zoom way in and look at the red you can see sticking out. You'll notice very little thickening, if any. It really is mostly a display faux pas that makes outlines look fat.
PS if you want, you could of course go to Effect>Path>Offset Path, and then enter a small negative number...
Bert
Laith Ibrahim
I had this problem today when I designed a card for a customer in Illustrator and saved it as a PDF. When I open the PDF in Acrobat it looks different even though I'm still using the same computer. I was going to send the file to a shop that makes "embossing". I knew later that they don't have Illustrator so I had to save the file as a PDF. And since it didn't open with the right fonts on my computer I had one solution left (I had no other in mind at the beginning) and that was to convert the text into outlines. The customer is very picky and I thought outlining the text will make it thicker and he might not like the printed cards. What I did was saving the file as an eps from Illustrator 10 (without converting text to outlines) then used distiller to convert it into PDF that had no fonts issues. I sent this file to the print shop and hope that it will print right.
My question again: How to overcome the problem of text getting thicker when converted to outlines?????
Thank you for listening:)
Regards,
Laith
Laith Ibrahim
Thanks for replying.
So what you're saying is that text will have same thickness when printed? I printed some business cards yesterday and they looked thicker with outlines!!
As for the "offset path" I tried it before but didn't work out. I get extra small shapes around text(with a negative number).
Bert do you have any other solutions?
Regards,
Laith
Alexander Kogan.
I printed some business cards yesterday and they looked thicker with outlines!!
Did you print it on an PostSrcipt printer or a PCL one? The PostScript shouldn't change the curves much enough for the difference to be noticable.
Another question: have you tried sliding the Printing & Export slider in the Document Setup>Transparency all way to the right so all of your object print as vectors?
Alexander Kogan.
I get extra small shapes around text(with a negative number).
the Object>Path>Offset Path command creates an offset copy of the original art, so you may want to delete the original if you negative offset it.
You can also apply a live effect (Effect>Path>Offset Path) that won't affect (pun unintented) your object but will make it look the way you (hopefully) like. You can discard the effect afterwards whenever you want by clicking the Reduce to Basic Appearance button in the Appearance palette (Shift-F6).
Lance K
What kind of printer do you have?
When you convert text to outline, the text loses hinting instructions--information built into the font that improves its output to lower resolution devices (like a 600 dpi PostScript desktop printer for example).
The loss of hinting should unnoticeable, or barely noticeable if you are printing to a high resolution PostScript device.
If you are printing to something like an inkjet printer, it's possible that your letters will be thicker, just like they look on screen.
Hope this helps,
Lance
Alexander Kogan.
what is the size and the font type of the text that gives you the issue?
Laith Ibrahim
I printed the business cards (with text converted to outlines) on a laser printer; Xerox N40(which is a post script printer) and also on a Digital Copier; Xerox 2060 which is considered a laser printer too. The Printing & Export slider is already at far right!! The way I was offsetting path was wrong, the numbers I put wasn't right. I put very small numbers and it worked fine but it's hard to get exact numbers to get the right offset that will match the text that wasn't outlined. Thanks Alexander.
Lance, Thank you very much for your post. As I've mentioned earlier, I used laser printers to print the cards. Regards.
Laith
Joel Stransky
Laith Ibrahim
The font is CopperPlate(which is a True Type font) but I don't remember the size. The customer gave me a hardcopy of his business card and wanted me to match everything exactly; fonts and sizes.
Thanks.
Laith
Lance K
Having re-read your original post, I think I can give you a more direct answer to your questions:
There isn't really a tidy way to eliminate the thickening of text when converting to outlines for the reason I mentioned in my first post (although using the offset path is pretty neat trick).
The combination of business cards (which typically use text in small point sizes), desktop PostScript printers, and a fastidious client makes for a difficult situation.
Your workflow of saving your Illustrator file as an EPS with text intact, distilling in Acrobat and sending the PDF to your print shop should work just fine. The EPS contains the font information with hinting intact and (assuming distiller was set to embed fonts)Distiller will include the font information--with hinting--in the PDF file.
Lance
Laith Ibrahim
Thnaks a lot.
Take care.
Laith