Acrobat TouchUp text: Helvetica problem

telecomm · Nov 13, 2008

Hi all,

I know this is dangerous territory, but I'm trying to use the TouchUp text tool in Acrobat Pro 9 to alter text in Helvetica, and no matter what I've tried I get Original Font: Helvetica, but Editing Font: Arial. If I select Helvetica from the Font list, it immediately switches back to Arial.

I'm pretty sure Arial isn't the same as Helvetica.

Is it just me? This happens when files are created using Helvetica in either the latest version of Pages or Word 2008, and when created using the built-in PDF engine or selecting the Adobe PDF 9.0 Printer.

Edit: This also happens with these same files in Acrobat 8 on Tiger.

7on · Nov 14, 2008

Do you have Helvetica in your fonts? The document could have an embedded Helvetica and when you edit it's going to Arial. Or your Helvetica on your machine is corrupted.

telecomm · Nov 14, 2008

Yup, Helvetica is available, enabled, and passes Font Book verification.

As I created the original document, I've got exactly the same version of the font available (and I don't have any duplicates of Helvetica).

I'm going to try to clean out the font caches to see if that helps.

If anyone has a second to try this out, could you check to see if this problem is showing up on your system? (I.e., create PDF from Word using Helvetica, open in Acrobat and try to use the TouchUp text tool.) I'm curious to know if it's just me...

Edit: Cleaning the font cache didn't help, and I can reproduce this problem when creating from TextEdit too (on Tiger/PPC/Pro 8, and Leopard/Intel/Pro 9). I'm thinking this is a weird bug of some sort.

design-is · Nov 17, 2008

Do you have Adobe InDesign or Illustrator to try from? This may be something to do with how the programs used embed the font badly?

No other thoughts at the moment.

telecomm · Nov 17, 2008

I might try this with docs created in InDesign or Illustrator later, but seeing as this problem is reproducible from more than one source (i.e., the built-in Mac Quartz PDF engine, and Adobe's PDF printer), I doubt that would yield any better results. I'm going to check this on another work machine later today (time permitting), but I think it's just a bug.

telecomm · Nov 17, 2008

For anyone excited to try this at home (and who can't be bothered to create a PDF themselves)

, here are a couple of fancy docs to look at. Both are created with TextEdit, one with Quartz, one with the Adobe printer.

pjonesCET · Nov 17, 2008

I downloaded both your test files and was able to edit. first I clicked on the text edit. waited for fonts to load then clicked in the line I was able to remove and insert the *i* in This, in both documents.

I wen to pdf optimizer and check and it show the font as subsetted but embedded.

telecomm · Nov 17, 2008

Hmm... I wonder what's going on with my system(s). I can also add and delete text, but all added text is in Arial. Is the text you're adding in Helvetica as well?

(Try to add a letter 't' next to one that's already in the document for an easy way to check this, zooming in on the two letter 't's would allow you to quickly distinguish Arial from Helvetica, if there is a substitution.)

Thanks for helping out with this!

Blue Velvet · Nov 17, 2008

pjonesCET said:
I wen to pdf optimizer and check and it show the font as subsetted but embedded.

That's the issue. You need full font embedding to make editable PDFs using the same font.

telecomm · Nov 17, 2008

Blue Velvet said:
That's the issue. You need full font embedding to make editable PDFs using the same font.

Hmm... I'm able to make an editable PDF that doesn't have full font embedding.

For example, if I make a document in the same way using Times (attached) this works.

Below are 4 screenshots: the initial font report and the result after editing, in both cases.

This has me baffled. Both are /System fonts, both are enabled, not duplicates, not copy protected, and listed as embeddable in Font Book.

covisio · Nov 18, 2008

telecomm said:
As I created the original document, I've got exactly the same version of the font available (and I don't have any duplicates of Helvetica).

Yes, and no.

I seem to remember that when you create a PDF file with embedded fonts, the resulting embedded font is unique, and is given a completely unique internal reference. This is so that downstream devices don't mix up 'your' Helvetica with a Helvetica which may be installed on the device.

I think you may have all your warnings turned off? Because when I try to edit I get similar problems to you but with a host of warnings, i.e. when I first click on the text with the Touch Up Text Tool I get this:

When I right click on the text and choose Properties, then change my editing font from Arial to Helvetica, I get this:

and when I say OK I get this:

Make of this what you will. I have always had conflicts on my system between the Helvetica that is installed as part of the default Mac font set, and the type 2 Postscript Helvetica and Helvetica Neue that I have from my 1993(!!!) Linotype Hell Gold disc. I have never been able to properly resolve this. I wonder if you are experiencing a similar problem?

telecomm · Nov 18, 2008

covisio said:
I seem to remember that when you create a PDF file with embedded fonts, the resulting embedded font is unique, and is given a completely unique internal reference. This is so that downstream devices don't mix up 'your' Helvetica with a Helvetica which may be installed on the device.

Yeah, I suspect what's happening is maybe something like that, but it's strange that only Helvetica (as far as I can tell) seems to get this "special treatment." I was wondering if having another version of the Helvetica installed (say, in my user folder) would give me different results, and I might give that a try.

Doing this with Times shows the sort of behaviour you're describing (it gets dubbed "Times-Roman") but then I can still select Times as my editing font and everything still works as expected.

Oh, and your images aren't displaying, but I suspect you've got an earlier version of Acrobat if you're getting more error messages. They seem to have toned down the warning messages in version 9.

bmipete · Nov 5, 2009

I'm having the same problem as Telecomm here. I have created in Indesign a PDF using Helvetica, but using the Touch-Up text tool only types in Arial.

my PDF setting for subset fonts is:

Subset fonts when percent of characters used is less than :100%

Is there anything else I need to do to ensure my edited PDFs use Helevetica. I have checked my font's folder and I have the TT truetype font installed, infact I have the whole typeface.

Forgot to mention also, i'm actually on a PC which makes this all stranger... (yeah i appreciate i'm on a mac forum - i'm actually a mac user but am forced to use a pc at work)

telecomm · Nov 5, 2009

I never did sort this out, but in my case I did have the original files, so I just edited those.

If you have any luck with this, let us know!

bmipete · Nov 5, 2009

Funnily enough - i took the above perecntage down to 0% and now when I edit it in acrobat it comes up as Helevetica! What i'm now not sure is what someone sees when they open the PDF and don't own helvetica...

telecomm · Nov 5, 2009

bmipete said:
Funnily enough - i took the above perecntage down to 0% and now when I edit it in acrobat it comes up as Helevetica! What i'm now not sure is what someone sees when they open the PDF and don't own helvetica...

You can figure that part out by checking your document font properties. If the full font (or a subset) is embedded, they'll see Helvetica. Otherwise it'll depend on whether they have Helvetica. (Just like, for example, a Word doc.)

jonamara · Mar 28, 2013

I am currently encountering the same problem. Were you ever able to figure out what was causing this?

telecomm · Mar 29, 2013

jonamara said:
I am currently encountering the same problem. Were you ever able to figure out what was causing this?

It was a while ago now, but I don't think that I did ever figure out the problem. (I suspect it's just an Acrobat bug, rather than a font problem.)

Are you using an older version of Acrobat and having this problem, or is it still an issue in recent versions?

firedept · Mar 29, 2013

telecomm said:
It was a while ago now, but I don't think that I did ever figure out the problem. (I suspect it's just an Acrobat bug, rather than a font problem.)

Are you using an older version of Acrobat and having this problem, or is it still an issue in recent versions?

I am using Acrobat Pro X and same thing here. But when I export my PDF from Indesign or any other program, it is converting the Helvetica to Arial. When I check the Properties of the text in my exported PDF, it shows that the document text was originally done in Helvetica but is now using Arial. When I try any other font with the touchup tool it will change the text to what I have chosen. Helvetica seems to be the only one that will not change. It just goes back to Arial. I can only assume that PDF's do not like Helvetica for some reason, hence the change to Arial on converting the document to a PDF. I have tried many export settings with no different results. Maybe posting this to Adobe Forums will get a solution. To me it is no big deal as I do not use Helvetica font very often.

Update: Have tried this with several different fonts and no issues. Any text I change with different fonts I used seems to work fine. It does not substitute any of the fonts with a different one. Will use the same font that the document was created with.

Acrobat TouchUp text: Helvetica problem

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