How-To’s Day: Acrobat: PDFs and Fonts, Why To Embed, How To Embed

When and how to make PDFs is at the top of many designers’ “huh?” lists. And, crowning the list of PDF-creation confusions is often questions about font embedding, when and how to use embedding, what is “subsetting,” and how does Acrobat handle subsetted and even missing fonts in PDFs.

In the below how-to, “Fonts Can Make or Break PDFs,” Shlomo Perets will tutor you on the ins and outs of fonts in PDFs.

To reduce file size when fonts are embedded, font subsetting can be employed so that only the characters actually used in the PDF will be embedded. As typically only a small portion of the characters included in a font is actually used in a specific document, the result is a significant reduction of font data. This is especially the case with fonts that store many hundreds or even thousands of characters (Far Eastern, Unicode, or OpenType fonts).

Subsetting will limit or prevent editing operations (text editing or insert/replace page operations). This is generally not an issue with PDFs distributed as final documents to be viewed or printed elsewhere. If these editing operations are anticipated as part of the specific PDF life cycle, don’t use subsetting. Take into account, however, that subsetting may take place by default already at the PostScript driver level.

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