How To Add Arabic Fonts In Adobe Illustrator

[Eberardo Topher]

Arabictext doesn't show properly in Adobe Illustrator. Even with a font that supports Arabic text (e.g. Arial), the text is back to front (left to right, not right to left) and the letters don't join up properly. To an Arabic speaker, it's gibberish.

Edit: Thanks to Supamike in this question about this problem in Photoshop there's what looks like a simpler solution that also works in Illustrator for point text (it screws up if you have area text that spans more than one line, so you need to use point text then manually put line breaks in and re-order the lines of text, else the first line is at the bottom and the last is at the top).

Type or copy your text into the top box on -keyboard.org/photoshop-arabic/, then copy and paste the output text in the bottom box into Illustrator, and it seems to keep the joins correctly applied and the text appears the correct way round.

Note that illustrator still treats it like it's left-to-right text, so while it looks correct, editing it will feel strange if you normally type in Arabic. So, if you need to edit the Arabic text, I'd recommend doing the edits in a separate word processor, then copy into the above site, then copy into Illustrator.

You'll also need to set it to right-align. Basically, it seems to forcibly replace the characters with their appropriate joined ligatures. The software doesn't treat it as Arabic text, but the characters you are pasting are the correct joined forms of the characters.

Here's a side-by-side comparison of the Arabic word for Arabic (العربية), copied and pasted into a variety of applications with default settings, with suggested best approach at the end. Here's the original from Wikipedia as a screenshot image for comparison:

So it seems like the best, most reliable low/no cost solution to Alex's problem is to have a copy of Inkscape handy. When an issue like this comes up, write and style the text in Inkscape as you would do in Illustrator (Inkscape's interface seems weird when used to illustrator, lettering options like tracking, kerning, line height etc seem to be controlled through keyboard shortcuts, but comparable features are there), then copy and paste the Inkscape text object directly into Illustrator when it is ready. For me (on Windows) copying and pasting translates it into vector paths maintaining the correct lettering. Here's how it looks pasted in to Illustrator and selected (next to Illustrator's earlier attempt for comparison):

If keeping a copy of Inkscape installed just for occasional things like this sounds like a pain, those open source guys have thought of that: there's a portable version which you can run off a pen drive. I've never used it so I won't recommend a place to download it that I haven't tried, but it seems to exist and work.

TaDa! You can now edit the arabic text and shift the font etc. You can even copy/paste it flawlessly, as long as your Illustrator was able to load the original PSD file (try also other types of files, like EPS files generated with a Illustrator ME version maybe? I didn't try that). Just look for free PSD files containing arabic text (generated with a ME version) on the web and use them. Or use the one I included in step 2 if it's still available. Hope it will work for you!

Thanks for the tips! The PC trick sort of helped me. I opened up an old (ME version) InDesign file with editable Arabic text in it on my Mac's non-ME version InDesign CS6, and copied the Arabic text I needed from TextEdit/email straight into the Arabic text box in the ME InDesign Arabic file, and it showed perfectly right and editable as well. Thankfully I had Arabic fonts installed already so the text didn't appear funny or broken.

You may have a look at this plug in ScribeDOOR :ScribeDOOR allows you to edit and work in one or several of the following languages at the same time: Arabic, Azeri, Bengali, Farsi, Georgian, Greek, Gujarati, Hebrew, Hindi, Kannada, Kazakh, Khmer/Cambodian, Lao, Marathi, Punjabi, Tamil, Thai, Urdu, Vietnamese.

I just pasted the text into fontbook using the font "Baghdad" then took a screenshot and used image trace to get the curves of the Arabic word I needed. Worked like a charm! Word would not copy correctly for me. I am using CS6.

It does not look as it suppose to look like and also it adds some symbols that are not suppose to be there.

When I upload the same font file to other design tool (Pitch) it looks as it shown online of the font specimen page. What could be the problem here?

Hi, I've similar issue, same fonts are working in previous versions (Illustrator 2021) but 2022 can't read 90% of arabic fonts. It Shows the font and preview but when you select a font either its some boxes or just the same characters....

AXT (Arabic Xtension) fonts were created for QuarkXpress in the 1980s, they're bad enough to use in a publication as they're not searchable in a PDF. Adobe announced back in 2014 that they will stop supporting these fonts. I know AXT fonts are widely used in the Arab World because these fonts are bastards as no one owns them now.

I'm living and working in UAE - but my language has always been set as English UK in the settng panel preferences and never had an issue before. Now i have to set manually the text tool everytime i want to use it - super annoying!

In Adobe InDesign, we change application defaults by simply closing any open documents, change the font to Gill Sans, change paragraph directions, dictionary language, and any other formatting. From there on, any new document you create in InDesign will remember your new defaults that suit Latin language users, but this is only in InDesign.

Hi! I had the same problem. In a past CC version, I did download InDesign for Arabic fonts. I remember setting this up in my Creative-Cloud downloader. - This isn't the case anymore. Any software version can have its language and style-writing altered without having to download a new version for it.

I had the same problem it turned out to be keyboard preference language you can change it in the task bar, you will see ENG or AR open it it will open a small window then start typing in AI then when typing to hindi or arabic click small language window and select english and problem You will be solved

@danielfeary You may consider installing two versions of Illustrator, one can be the Middle Eastern version for Arabic jobs, and the other version can be of a different language such as English for your regular jobs.

In Illustrator however it is a longer issue, to my knowledge you need to change your file profile. For instance, if you use the "Print" profile, you will have to change all defaults in a new document, name this new document as Print.ai to replace the one that comes "out of the box" with Illustrator.

this solved my issue. AI is really weird: you ahve to change all default type settings in order to have Illustrator open documents in the right way. My defaults were for Arabic: any document written in 100% English were automatically converted into hindi figures and weird text for repalced fonts.

THanks @Zaid Al Hilali . In the end, that's what I did. Well, I don't have an arabic job currently so uninstalled my existing version of Illustrator and reinstalled an English version. Thanks for the help

Please I am from an Arab country most of my work is based on Arabic Fonts (Right to Left fonts) so I find a difficulty in Affinity Designer because it doesn't support tight to left fonts. I have to right it in Adobe illustrator export it as a png then import to to my Affinity Designer project as a png image. You see how it is difficult!

I have a magento CMS ecommerce based group buying deals website based in UAE and my developers have coded it in a way to send out PDF coupon vouchers in Arabic language to customers who bought the deal.

The problem is that the characters inside the PDF look very akward! They are disjointed and not connected together and they are displayed in a reversed order which can only be readable from left to right. So in other words the coupon vouchers in Arabic look extremely messy!

From what I see, it is not related to PDF or Acrobat, your CMS system may not support Arabic fully or it's not PDFing in the right way. The developers need to look into this matter, but I apologies for not having any suggestions for them.

If you can't get the people who designed your coupon to fix the problems, you can save the PDF as a Microsoft Word document and edit in an Arabic version of Word. Word should have proper Arabic fonts and right to left text flow. Then you convert to PDF from Word's Acrobat tab. It is not the best answer, but if you cannot go back to the place that designed your coupon, you may have to redo it in a proper editor and export it to PDF.

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