Real World Print Production with Adobe Creative Suite Applications

Outlining Text

Fonts contain information, called hinting, which refines the display and printing of text. Consequently, some purists hold that those who outline text should be tarred and feathered. It’s true that converting text to outlines eliminates hinting, so text may display onscreen as if slightly bloated and will print slightly heavier on desktop printers because of the lower resolution of those devices. You should avoid outlining text if the job will be printed on a digital press such as a Xerox iGen or an HP Indigo: The 600–1200 dpi resolution of digital presses can result in obvious thickening of small text. However, the fattening is not usually apparent when outlined text is imaged on higher-resolution devices such as imagesetters ...