I've always used Pages (v12.2, running on M1 Ventura) for all my designs for 10+ years, including posters, cardboard box design, and now a mylar pouch design. I add images, text, designed to the dieline template, then Export to PDF at BEST quality. But this manufacturer is asking the fonts to be "outline all text."

Is there a way to do this? Why does he need this? And at last resort, is there a way to convert the Pages or PDF to Adobe Illustrator, or do I need to start everything from scratch? Thanks for knowledge on this.

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M1 2020 Mac mini (16G 2T) • Sonoma 14.x • Dual 27" Dell S2722QC monitors • M2 2022 13" MBAir (512G 16G) •

By ‘outline all text’ he’s asking that any type in the design be converted from fonts to vector artwork. This is to prevent problems with missing or corrupted fonts. However, once converted to outlines, the text is no longer editable, so you want to make sure you save a copy of your working file in the original state.

Note that this process is unconnected and unrelated to the design option of adding a stroke or ‘outline’ to type as a design choice.

Illustrator can convert type to outlines, as well as Acrobat Pro, to my knowledge, Pages does not have this capability.

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>>>Is there a way to do this?


Open the pages file in Illustrator, select all layers and SHIFT-CMD-O (Create Outlines).

Quote
tuqqer
But this manufacturer is asking the fonts to be "outline all text."

It seems like your supplier is not familiar with the virtues of the PDF format… (Does the supplier know that once text is outlined, it can no longer be changed or edited?)

Anyway, if you open your Pages PDF in Preview and then Export it, you'll have a bunch of enhancement options available including conversion of the PDF to the prepress-friendly PDF/X-3 format which does font embedding. The latter obviates the need to vectorize text.

Wow, this thread has been an education. Because I never had a need to work with printers that requested outline fonts, I never learned quite what that was or why it was needed. Blankity Blank's explanation finally made sense.

I still don't grasp why a printer needs fonts to print something with letters, since it seems that letters are just one more vector design element in a photo/print. But maybe having the outline or actually font makes it that much clearer in the final print.

I also thought that a PDF was a vector file, so that it would be crystal clear no matter size big or small it was printed at. This is why I assumed my Pages-created PDFs always worked for print needs in the past.

MikeBW's tip on how Illustrator can convert these PDFs to outline text is a godsend. I haven't owned Adobe stuff for awhile, but now I can tell any printer to simply open my PDF in their AI, select all layers and SHIFT-CMD-O to Create Outlines. (I just learned last night that I can do this in my Affinity Designer: Select Text, Layer Menu: Convert to Curves. However, there's no way to convert an Affinity file to AI, so there's that issue).

Also got straight on difference of raster/vector files here.

Article, I PM'd you to learn more what you're referring to. I couldn't see those option in the Preview Export function.

Many thanks.

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M1 2020 Mac mini (16G 2T) • Sonoma 14.x • Dual 27" Dell S2722QC monitors • M2 2022 13" MBAir (512G 16G) •

Quote
tuqqer
I still don't grasp why a printer needs fonts to print something with letters, since it seems that letters are just one more vector design element in a photo/print. But maybe having the outline or actually font makes it that much clearer in the final print.

If you're just printing to PDF from Pages, you're not embedding the whole font. You get (at best) a subset. This may or may not be lawful under your license agreement for the font.

Your print service will need a licensed copy of the font to print your document legally. And not just the "font," but they'll need a license for the specific type of font (OTF/TT/PS) from the specific foundry.

Fonts are utilitarian and have "thin" copyright. Once you convert the font to outlines (which also removes potentially copyrightable metadata such as kerning and ligature information) or flatten it into a bitmap, you're generally outside the scope of the author's copyright.

The easiest way to deal with this situation from their perspective is to ask for you to give them a document with no fonts. Just the outlines. If they request a copy with an embedded font, or if they request a copy of the font, then they're inviting a potentially expensive copyright violation because some font licenses forbid such uses.

If they ask for artwork with outlines, they circumvent the licensing/copyright issue.

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Quote
Tiangou

If they ask for artwork with outlines, they circumvent the licensing/copyright issue.

This is amazing. Did not know this.

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M1 2020 Mac mini (16G 2T) • Sonoma 14.x • Dual 27" Dell S2722QC monitors • M2 2022 13" MBAir (512G 16G) •

Copyright Act, 17 U.S. Code § 101 - Definitions:

...the design of a useful article, as defined in this section, shall be considered a pictorial, graphic, or sculptural work only if, and only to the extent that, such design incorporates pictorial, graphic, or sculptural features that can be identified separately from, and are capable of existing independently of, the utilitarian aspects of the article.

Drafting Committee Comment:

The Committee has considered, but chosen to defer, the possibility of protecting the design of typefaces. The Committee does not regard the design of typeface, as thus defined, to be a copyrightable “pictorial, graphic, or sculptural work”. (H.R. Reg. No. 1476, 94th Cong., 2nd Sess 5 (1976))

Copyright Office opinion:

The creation of scalable font output programs… typically involves many decisions in drafting the instructions that drive the printer. The expression of these decisions is neither limited by the unprotected shape of the letters nor functionally mandated. This expression, assuming it meets the usual standard of authorship, is thus registrable as a computer program.

So, the outlines with metadata, spacing, printing-hints, etc. in the form of the font-file are potentially protected where the font-shapes are *probably* not.

(...Looking towards the future, the Copyright Office seems to be leaning towards defining the font-file as a document rather than a computer program because it's not actually executable code. They have supposedly been working on amended guidance based on this analysis for the better part of a decade. There are some powerful monied companies working very hard to ensure that this doesn't happen.)

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/03/2022 10:18PM by Tiangou.